Music Nation: Jungle Fever

For the last ever Music Nation episode, Dazed dive into the story of jungle with veterans from the scene like the Ragga Twins, Skibadee and DJ Hype. It premiered Channel 4 and, as ever, will be available to view on Dazed Digital a week after. Below the cut, director Ollie Evans talks about his own jungle roots and why it was a melting pot scene that brought everyone together.

Dazed Digital: How did you first get into jungle? 
Ollie Evans: I first got into jungle at secondary school, I vividly remember when the sound first came through and what it did to us at the time. I went to school in Handsworth in Birmingham which is a very mixed area, socially and culturally, and that was reflected in school. It’s a cliche to say but jungle really brought us together, listening to rave tapes borrowed from people’s older brothers or sisters. Kids that were only previously listening to Buju Banton were sharing Walkman ear buds with kids who had only previously listened to Nirvana. The jungle sound united us all and that was something that felt important.
Jungle was a sound we grew up with, before we could go raving we were spending Saturdays going record shopping in the morning, then round to each other’s homes in the afternoon to mix the records and evenings in cars with bass tubes driving round listening to jungle tapes.
Early clubbing experiences were our sixth form college parties where Rebel Bass, who were young Birmingham-based jungle promoters, would DJ. I played a few of these parties doing warm up slots, these we before we were old to enough to go clubbing properly. As soon as we could progressed up to going to bigger raves in the midlands like Helter Skelter, One Nation, Music First and Flashback at the Que Club, which incidentally is the best venue in the country.
DD: What are three of your favourite jungle records?
Ollie Evans: Favourite three is trickym there are so many. These 3 are all big tunes but deservedly so and are all undeniable classics. These three records have all lived with me throughout my life. Leviticus, "The Burial"; Remarc, "R.I.P" and Dred Bass, "Dead Dred".
DD: One of the biggest impressions of the doc is how diverse the jungle scene was, and how it was a real melting pot of ethnicities and influences. Why do you think jungle was so welcoming of that kind of diversity?
Ollie Evans: I think DJ Hype says it best in the documentary, it really was the sound itself that brought so much diversity to the scene. There is so much going in there musically, drawn from so many different sources that it appealed across the board to those looking for something new and exciting. It’s very edgy and purposeful music so whilst it also appealed across a wide spectrum of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds it was also completely off limits to a lot of people and that really solidified those that did get it into a movement.
DD: In the doc, people talk about seeing David Bowie and Bjork at jungle nights, and how jungle becoming "cool" kind of ruined things. Do you think that's necessarily the case?
Ollie Evans: I think when jungle became cool and co-opted by celebrity and the mainstream it did definitely lose a lot of its core audience who went over to garage, which is something that also coincided with the underground making the music much more inaccessible and dark, which again drove people away – which, in some ways, was intentional. I see jungle as the backbone of the ever evolving, ever-changing landscape of the UK underground club scene. Its influence can still be heard in the newest bass music being made today and then you can also still go out and here all the old stuff being played in real underground clubs – not in a retro or ironic sense, either, because people really love the music. It’s become a part of our heritage and it is as important as punk. It won’t go anywhere; it will ebb in and out of fashion but always remain.