Review: The Jungle Brothers (@JungleBros4Life) Live @TheJazzCafe

Jungle Brothers Live @ Jazz Café
Still Doing it by the Forces of Nature.

The Jungle, The Jungle. The Broth­ers, The Brothers.

Jungle Broth­ers are the least revered yet argu­ably most influ­en­tial of the Nat­ive Tongues col­lect­ive, a pan­theon that includes the ubi­quit­ous Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. Those that recall the Tribe doc­u­ment­ary will remem­ber (Afrika Baby) Bam retell­ing the story of how the eld­er JBs ment­ored and gave A Tribe Called Quest their full group name when before they were simply known as ‘Quest’. Mod­ern pop music taste makers such as Phar­rell Wil­li­ams point to the Jungle Broth­ers as massive music spir­it guides, and the group’s sopho­more album “Done by the Forces of Nature” is a mar­vel in Hip-Hop party music with a Afro­centric and Black Power themed core.

Angus Batey’s ret­ro­spect­ive on the album is a defin­it­ive throw­back to the album’s inception

“We wanted people to look at hip hop as some­thing that comes from Africa, that has its ori­gins in Africa,” Baby Bam said. “Let’s make this album like a col­lege piece, an intel­lec­tu­al piece. We had 20-some­thing songs for that album, but we wanted to make a body of work. ‘Let’s use some­thing from funk, some­thing from soul, some­thing from disco, some­thing from doo-wop, some­thing that reaches all the way back. Let’s make it poetry. Let’s do an album that encom­passes all of that!’ We was wear­in’ our Afric­an medal­lions and identi­fy­ing with that. We was going to a place in Har­lem called Africa House, burn­ing incense and read­ing books, drink­ing sor­rel and not eat­ing meat, and talk­ing with the eld­ers about Bob Mar­ley and Ghana and South Africa and apartheid. And tak­ing all of those exper­i­ences back into the stu­dio and mak­ing the stu­dio envir­on­ment almost like our vil­lage, our hut — just cre­at­ing that whole envir­on­ment. I had this red, gold and green flag with this kid on it who had dreads: I had that hanging up there in the stu­dio. I had all these beads that I made, some of ’em had bells on, and you can hear them on the record­ing because I did­n’t take ’em off when I went in the booth. There was a set of tom drums in the booth that I played on ‘Good Newz Com­in”. It was just about a vil­lage, tri­bal, hut-type of envir­on­ment in the studio.”

Step on Stage, Scream for More

If you have been to the Jazz Café, you would be famil­i­ar with the stairs that des­cend to the stage and the bal­cony above and behind the stage. As DJ Sammy B spun the open­ing beats for the JB, Mike Gee walked down calm and poised. Bam how­ever, stomped down the BAN­NIS­TERS of the afore­men­tioned stairs, leaped to the bal­cony and swung some 12 feet onto the stage to the rap­tur­ous audi­ence. For­get pyro­tech­nic and lazers — THIS was prob­ably the best show entrance I’ve ever seen. This set the tone for the night with Bam bring­ing big bang levels of energy and Mike Gee at the wheel for nav­ig­a­tion and steadiness.

On “Straight Out the Jungle,” the JBs traded verses with the same verve you ima­gined they were three dec­ades ago for their first smash single as well. This also applied to the bounce of “Because I Got it Like That.”  A bulk of the night’s high­lights were provided by the thun­der­ous funk of ‘Done by the Forces of Nature’s songs. “Feel­ing Alright”s bass groove had the whole ven­ue dan­cing. “Bey­ond this World” came straight from out­er space and Plan­et Rock with a pulsat­ing rhythm and school­ing lyr­i­cism: “A whole lot of talk about the red, black and green… Afrika from the Zulu Nation.” On their early records, Jungle Broth­ers were implor­ing their Black fans to reach into their own selves and learn about their rich tra­di­tions and cul­tures of past; in lat­ter day Lon­don the lyr­i­cism to a major­ity white audi­ence evokes a call to learn about true world his­tory… which is Black his­tory. It’s not just about hav­ing a dance and head nod on a Thursday even­ing after work.  Des­pite their happy demean­ours, JBs are still not to be trifled with as they exclaim “fuck around, will get stomped.”

The Jungle Broth­ers then made a trans­ition into their “I’ll House You” style mater­i­al with drum & bass mak­ing an appear­ance from their later records that brought oth­er dance and elec­tron­ic genres back into Hip-Hop.

What made the show one of the most excit­ing and live­li­est I’ve ever been to was the sheer energy of the group. Mike Gee seemed like the hap­pi­est man on the plan­et rhym­ing to time­less clas­sics with Sammy B rev­el­ling in every cut and mix. And Bam can really flip­pin’ dance. He was pop­pin, lock­ing and win­in’, often at frantic breath tak­ing speeds and the hype­ness trans­ferred to the crowd in a metamusic­al way.

It’s a shame that the Jungle Broth­ers are in a more obscure realm than some of the peers and pro­geny but a good entry point would be study their sopho­more album, a record with depth unpar­alleled in most Hip-Hop music.

Check out our inter­view with the Jungle Broth­ers Below:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku-KqCFojSM[/youtube]

By  Wasif Sayyed

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Wasif Sayyed

Author at I Am Hip-Hop Magazine

Wasif Sayyed’s many years as a writer, rap­per, pro­moter, ment­or and hip-hop pro­du­cer have shaped him into an enthu­si­ast­ic and insight­ful cul­tur­al cryp­to­graph­er. He loves read­ing and cook­ing, and can hear the whis­per of an unsheathed liquid sword from 50 paces. Twit­ter @WasifScion

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