Breakbeat - History

History

Breakbeats were used in the 1920s by jazz and swing bands. A popular breakbeat song of the 1920s was the Charleston. Fast forward to the late 1970s and early 1980s, hiphop turntablists, such as Kool DJ Herc, began using several funk breaks in a row, using irregular drum patterns from songs such as James Brown Funky Drummer and The Winstons Amen Brother, to form the rhythmic base for hiphop songs. Kool DJ Herc's breakbeat style was to play the same record on two turntables and play the break repeatedly by alternating between the two records. This style was copied and improved upon by early hip hop DJs Afrika Bambaataa and Grand Wizard Theodore. This style was extremely popular in clubs and dance halls because the extended breakbeat provided breakdancers with more opportunities to showcase their skills.

In the early 1990s, acid house artists and producers started using breakbeat samples in their music to create breakbeat hardcore, also known as rave music. The hardcore scene then diverged into sub-genres like jungle and drum and bass, which generally had a darker sound and focused more on complex sampled drum patterns. An example of this is Goldie's album Timeless.

Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out, trance-like state that the standard, steady 4/4 beats of house enabled. In 1994 the influential techno act Autechre released the Anti EP in response to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 using advanced algorythmic programming to generate non-repetitive breakbeats for the full duration of the tracks to subvert the legal definitions within that legislation.