Breaks are a well known and oft-used component of improvisational jazz. They
tend to be shorter than solos at around a measure or so and involve any
instrument that plays alone for that time (We talk about breakbeats because
these are the variety of break that hip hop and jungle use, but you could as
well hunt down the rare sax or vocal breaks). Hip hop used lots of these
from groups like the Meters, Bob James and other 60's and 70's soul-jazz.
One of the most-used breaks in jungle comes from the flip of a 1969 hit by
the Winstons called "Color Him Father," usually having been cut to ribbons
by the producer so as to be unrecognizable, but also well used by techno
beatsnatchers and hip-hoppers alike.
In much the same way that you can't take a rap instrumental, listen to the
beat and reconstruct the song it was sampled from, you can't slow down a
jungle chune and trace its roots. Speed is only one facial aspect of jungle
and by far the more telling one is its building on the method of breakbeat
sampling from jazz rekks pioneered by hiphop samplers. The beats don't seem
similar to their hip hop predecessors because the nature of samplers and
sequencing software today (primarily Cubase for its Arrange Window which
enables composers to work with figures, loops and themes of arbitrary and
differing lengths simultaneously) have allowed jungle producers to cut and
sequence and restructure and timestretch the beats and parts of beats and
even that one little hihat note can be riffed on for a measure or so if
desired. This ability to microcompose and tweak the fuck out of beats that
many times pays no attention to time signatures, note lengths, rudiments or
any of that traditional stuff that is usually required for some piece of
assembled sound to be considered real music. Taking into account the
traditional definition of syncopation as "not falling on the beat," jungle
falls well high on the list of spearheading exploration into progressive
attitudes toward rhythm.
eh