D&B Gatekeeping For Beginners

A tale of two very different situations... And what we can learn from the recent Worship debacle

Everyone loves to complain about drama in D&B but, judging by the engagement it generates, you all seem to secretly love it. So, in the spirit of giving the people what they want, here’s two for the price of one. A tale of two dramas. One from the mid-nineties and one from just a week or so ago.

First, the history lesson. Old heads will all know the story of General Levy and the Jungle Council, but let’s take a moment to get everyone up to speed.

Nowadays, of course, General Levy is considered one of the foremost representatives of jungle. He gave the genre one of its biggest anthems and has proven his enduring appeal on stages and on record for decades. His distinctive “hiccup” style made him iconic even among non-junglists, and you only have to watch that viral appearance on Mista Jam’s 1Xtra show to see the level of respect he’s earned from successive generations of artists. When the mainstream – Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Ali G, Honda, etc. – want to reference jungle, General Levy tends to get the call-up. It’s undeniable that, in many people’s minds, he’s the archetypal jungle artist.

But, for a period in the nineties, he was essentially blacklisted from a large swathe of the scene.

In 1994, General Levy was riding high off the back of the success of his and M-Beat’s Incredible, and the world was paying attention. He was interviewed by The Face – then a cool and influential fashion and culture magazine – and was quoted as saying that he was “running jungle”. Given that he’d only come into the jungle scene relatively recently, having primarily been a ragga and dancehall artist, this claim rubbed some more established junglists up the wrong way. It’s since transpired that General Levy was misquoted by The Face, but the article went to print and the damage was done.

Several key figures in jungle came together to form the Jungle Council – which you’ll also sometimes see referred to as The Committee – with the intention of protecting the genre from commercialisation and other corrupting influences. To this day, there’s no definitive list of who was part of this group, what was said behind closed doors, or all the specific actions they took. Those who know the inside story are still unwilling to go into details. One thing we do know for sure, though, is that they decided General Levy needed taking down a peg or two so they told DJs to stop playing his tunes and promoters to stop booking him.

This is all water under the bridge now, of course, but the interesting thing is that, even though not everyone played ball and you’d still hear ‘Incredible’ getting dropped at raves, the Jungle Council’s power over the scene was enough that General Levy’s bookings fell away and he was forced to carve his own career path away from the UK jungle and D&B scene. The elite gatekeepers of the genre in the 1990s could do that.

Now, let’s compare and contrast.

You see, something similar happened just last week. Sub Focus, Dimension, Culture Shock and 1991 did an interview with EDM.com about their upcoming “Worship” tour of the US. Some of their answers were taken as having a flavour of saviour complex, talking about how the American D&B scene “had to change” and how they “had to invest a huge amount” to “create something fresh”. And, like the resistance to General Levy’s attributed claim, a lot of people weren’t having that. Stateside heads who’ve been grafting at the grassroots felt disrespected, and UK artists who’ve been touring transatlantically for decades backed up that view and suggested that the Worship guys were attempting to rewrite history and position themselves as “running” the US scene.

Of course, this could be another case of words being misinterpreted or taken out of context. It could be a canny PR move by the group’s manager Seb Weingartshofer who owns the Worship brand (we all know that name now, but a lot of us didn’t last week!). Or one of several other possibilities. The he-said-she-saids of it all aren’t the key point here, though. It’s the fact that the backlash didn’t primarily come from any type of ‘D&B Illuminati’. It wasn’t spearheaded by A-list superstars but by the local promoters, the resident artists, the agents and bookers, the loyal ravers…the actual people involved in the day-to-day business of the US drum & bass scene.

And that’s a major difference between 1994 and 2024. Everyone has a voice now. Social media has let the democratisation genie out of the bottle and there’s no way any “D&B Council” – regardless of who was part of it – could unilaterally blacklist someone from the scene in any kind of meaningful way these days. On the other hand, if the grassroots of the scene want to hold A-listers to account, they can do so and amplify their message just as loudly. The column inches and comment threads over the last week have been less about what the Worship gang said about the scene and more about what the scene had to say about them. The power balance has shifted.

In 1994, no-one outside the upper echelons got a say on whether General Levy got bookings or not. In 2024, that decision would be made on the socials, guided by the weight of public opinion.

So is this change good or bad? That’s unclear. It’s certainly inevitable, given the rise of social media, so there’s probably no point crying about it, but there are definitely cons as well as pros.

For example, in the pro column for D&B democratisation: anyone can make a tune, record a set, or spit some bars and get noticed if they’re good enough at music. In the con column: anyone can make a tune, record a set, or spit some bars and get noticed if they’re good enough at self-promotion. The gatekeepers who used to decide if your dubs got played, if you got let on the decks, or if you got passed the mic would primarily be looking for talent because that was the essential ingredient for success. But now that popularity is an easily-accessible metric, based on social media numbers, of course that plays more of a role than it used to.

And that shapes the underlying ethos of the scene.

The gatekeepers used to be the people who were there from the beginning, who helped lay the foundations for the music and set the template. They had a deep understanding of where it came from, what it stood for, and what it was reacting against. They were able to consciously and deliberately direct the scene. With democratisation, and without an overall guiding hand, comes a tendency to latch onto short-term trends rather than considering longer-term strategy.

So, as the power of the traditional D&B gatekeepers changes hands, there’s potential for evolution as different styles, influences and ideas become accepted, and talented people can get the spotlight they deserve without having to beg for approval from a cabal at the top. But there’s also potential for losing something vital if we ignore the scene’s roots in a constant chase for the latest shiny thing.

 

 

The gatekeepers were, traditionally, our connection to the history of the scene; the people who remembered the blues parties, the soundsystems, the b-boy culture, the acid house raves, and the radical innovation of the early days of jungle. They were the people who insisted on keeping those influences alive. They remember that a DJ is primarily a selector, not necessarily a triple-dropping flurry of technical fireworks. They remember that an MC is a host and a vibe-curator, not just a rapper. They remember that rave culture is about everyone in the room connecting with each other and the music – performers and partyers alike – rather than an us-and-them separation. They remember the things that made drum & bass special in the first place and which have meant our genre thrives while so many others have fallen away.

But, we’re in the post-gatekeeper era of drum & bass now. It’s not good or bad, it’s just how things were always going to work out over a long enough timeline, but we’re definitely in a whole different world from when the Jungle Council had a strong influence over the show. While, inevitably, that means that ultra-commercial or novelty D&B will become more prevalent as clout-chasers take advantage of the lack of barriers to entry, it does mean that the community as a whole gets a say on how things develop. For the former-gatekeeper class, that means that – if they want the scene to stay connected to its authentic roots – that has to be done through participation, engagement and education, rather than relying on direct control.

Right now, drum & bass is somewhere it has never been before. It’s on the precipice of a huge future of international commercial success but also, potentially, of being yanked loose from its connection to its roots. And the people who will decide how this plays out aren’t some rarefied, elite ‘Council’, but the combined voice of the scene as a whole. That’s the only meaningful gatekeeper.

D&B has grown up and moved out from its parents’ house to explore the big wide world. Without that control. And without that safety net.

Now, everyone gets to vote – through their social media activity and through their direct participation – on what the next phase looks like.. For its first decade or so, the jungle-D&B continuum was directed by the elite who’d created it. Ordinary ravers and lower-tier artists basically had to just put up with the scene that was presented to them. Now, though, you get to have your say too. Your voice, your like, your share, your comment, your download, your ticket purchase, directly contribute to shaping drum & bass in a way they never did before.

We’re all The Committee now. We all have the power. And the way we collectively shape the scene over the next few years will show how ready we were to take on that responsibility. That’s both exciting and very scary. Don’t screw it up.

Power your creative ideas with pixel-perfect design and cutting-edge technology. Create your beautiful website with Zeen now.