What Makes Something Jungle? With Jungalist Historian, Julia Toppin

What happened to jungle music? How did a genre born from Black British culture, reggae sound systems, and 90s rave scenes become dominated by white, male audiences—and where are the women who helped shape it?

In this episode of Girls Twiddling Knobs, Isobel explores these questions with Julia Toppin, a lecturer, music entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed “Junglist Historian.” Julia takes us through jungle’s vibrant origins, its evolution into drum and bass, and the systemic challenges that sidelined both women and Black voices in the scene.

They discuss trailblazers like DJ Rap and EQ50, the barriers women faced breaking into male-dominated spaces, and the exciting resurgence of jungle led by a new generation of diverse artists. Along the way, you’ll discover the unique sounds that define jungle and the enduring impact of reggae sound system culture.

Tune in for an eye-opening exploration of jungle’s history, its cultural shifts, and its bold future—plus a playlist of tracks that showcase its iconic legacy.

Listen to the What Makes Something Playlist (specially curated for GTK by Julia) >> 

Find out more about Julia’s research >> 

Connect with Julia on X >>

Nzinga Sound >>

EQ 50 Collective >>

If you loved listening to this week's episode of the podcast, leave a review wherever you're listening now and let me know 💜💜💜

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Girls Twiddling Knobs is hosted by Isobel Anderson and produced by Isobel Anderson and Jade Bailey.

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Transcript

00:00:00.62
Isobel Anderson
And welcome to Girls Toodling Knobs Julia, it is wonderful to have you here.

00:00:05.63
Julia Toppin
Oh I'm absolutely delighted to be here Isabelle and I met you ah previously. I'm just so excited about your whole project, your work and you know it just aligns in with all the things that I believe in and the things that I do so I'm very happy to be here.

00:00:23.57
Isobel Anderson
Oh, no, it's great. And I'm really glad we're going to be talking about, um, oh, hang on a minute. I just, there we go. I'm really glad we're going to be talking about jungle today because we haven't talked about jungle yet on the podcast. Um, and I think it's going to be really interesting delving into not just the history of jungle, but the role that women have played as well. So maybe we should just start by you sharing a little bit about who you are, what you do and your connection to jungle too.

00:00:50.58
Julia Toppin
Okay, right, so um ah my name is ah Julia, I'm also known as, hold on, just get that right, let's start again.

00:01:00.61
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:01:01.09
Julia Toppin
Right, so yeah, um I'm Julia Toppin, I'm a lecturer in music enterprise and entrepreneurship at the University of Westminster. um Before that I did lots of different media type things ah but I also run a drama based label with my cousin who's called DJ Grime Minister and our label's called Digital 101 Recordings and so when I went into, before I went into academia I was a teacher, before that I was working in the media as a producer, television producer

00:01:35.33
Julia Toppin
um And I wanted to learn how to ah run a label. My cousin came to me and said, help me run this label. And I was like, fine, OK. But I'm not going to take the 10 years it took to learn how to make TV. um So I went and did a master's and that rolled into my thesis, which was researching um women in jungle drum and bass and uh and then subsequently working as a lecturer so we still have our little micro label it still chuffs out the odd uh jump up drum and bass tune and uh we've got a christmas drum and bass track in fact um and um yeah so basically i started out by doing my MA thesis i was wondering like what had happened to

00:02:13.09
Isobel Anderson
Oh, nice.

00:02:26.17
Julia Toppin
the audiences, because I used to rave to Jungle in the 90s, right? And so when my cousin asked me in the sort of 2010s, like, come and help me run this label, I was like, okay.

00:02:37.73
Julia Toppin
And I thought I needed to immerse myself in the scene again. So I started um going out and the first rave that I went to, I was absolutely shell-shocked because it was just all white guys.

00:02:49.02
Julia Toppin
And I was like, and and you know, and we're talking about like a 2000 cat venue, right?

00:02:49.13
Isobel Anderson
Right.

00:02:54.57
Julia Toppin
And it's like,

00:02:55.00
Isobel Anderson
ah Yeah.

00:02:55.47
Julia Toppin
ninety nine ninety eight percent white guys there's a few women behind the bar and you know and i thought oh my god what happened because when i was raving in the 90s it was really balanced in terms of ethnicity in terms of gender um in terms of sexuality you know it was just like this really mixed happy place because you know as i'll talk about jungle kind of came out of like you know the rave season and and you know ecstasy and and all of that but kind of era. um So I was really shocked and I set out to try to work out, I'm like a problem solver, so I set out to like, okay, I want to solve this problem of what happened to um the women and all the black people in jungle. So in order to do that, I had to kind of do this sort of history of jungle and I started diving into the history of jungle.

00:03:47.85
Julia Toppin
And then you find lots of different things, like, you know, it's mainly been all written by men, very women, you know, very few women have had their accounts taken on board in terms of like the history of jungle and drum and bass. And then I also looked into what it was like for women that are DJing in jungle drum and bass, women that are producing jungle drum and bass. So that was like the basis of my MA thesis, which was titled um they're not in it like the mandem because uh that's what my cousin said when i was like where are the women we've got to have more women on the label and he was like they're not in it like the mandem do and uh and then you know and then over time i you know i had to go and like search for the women you know and and i found loads of them and uh and yeah and so that was that was like the basis for my research i feel like i've gone on a bit

00:04:27.88
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:04:34.69
Isobel Anderson
Mmm. Mmm.

00:04:43.39
Isobel Anderson
No, you haven't at all. I've got so many questions. So I really want to get into the the sort of gender aspect of what you talked about, but I'd first like to get into understanding a bit more about the race profile that you're talking about there because, you know, obviously jungle, maybe not obviously if people don't know much about it, but it's, you know, it is a ah music form that has come from the black community. And so then for you to describe these audiences as being like 99% white male, but why is that? Just looking at race first.

00:05:12.94
Isobel Anderson
Why is that?

00:05:13.03
Julia Toppin
Well, yeah, it's a really good question, right? And um I think people get a bit upset by my response. I try to be as balanced as possible because I don't have skin in the game like I wasn't a DJ at that time. You know, I was a raver. I think I've got a much more objective ah version of events than others could have. So basically, Jungle um was a dance, you know, electronic dance music form that came, it probably was bubbling around the very, very late 80s, but really came into its own in the very early 90s. And what was special about Jungle is that really it was probably the first

00:05:59.06
Julia Toppin
black british music genre right although there were white people making jungle right it was like a sort of working class black and white youth thing but what makes it a black british thing is that the foundational elements of jungle come from reggae sound system culture having the mc having the rewind um having that you know that absolutely earth shattering base um So it took those foundational elements, but then it also took, um you know, the British side of things, which was like, you know, we had this whole dance music scene, we had Acid House, we had House, we had Techno, which obviously we know House and Techno come from Chicago and Detroit, but obviously once they got here in into Britain, we made, we made it our own thing as well, you know, so we were happy hardcore and

00:06:48.01
Julia Toppin
Acid House and Rave. um And then Jungle also took, because, you know, we it was like this generation of people that were kind of born like ah very late 60s, early 70s, right? So we also had, when they were producing, they were also taking elements from all over the place. So they were taking ah drum break beats from old soul records and from hip hop records, they were taking jazz samples, they were taking Algerian chant samples, they were taking stuff from the Eurymics, they were taking rock riffs, they were taking gangster movie clips and horror movie clips and just putting them all together and working with um you know different synthesizers and sampling machines and time stretching and just doing all this great stuff right because a lot of them weren't like classically trained musicians they were just kids like seeing oh what can I do

00:07:45.31
Julia Toppin
what can I do with this technology, right?

00:07:47.62
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:07:47.93
Julia Toppin
um And so that's why Jungle sounded very exciting, very fresh, very new and it kind of, it had this absolute peak in like 93, 94 where it was kind of everywhere um and then it kind of exploded across the country and then it kind of exploded internationally and um what how raves were very um dependent on from my research the raves were dependent upon the promoter so for example if it was a black promoter that had probably come from more the reggae side of things they've been previously doing that and getting into jungle then the raves tended to be a bit in terms of ethnicity they turned it tended to be a bit blacker and if it was maybe like a white promoter that had gone into jungle

00:08:37.45
Julia Toppin
then the raves tended to be a bit more on the white side and then a lot of things and then sometimes there were lots of promoters coming together and the raves are very mixed right so it kind of depended on lots of different things but I mean when we were talking about the massive like um you know field raves and uh you know stadiums in Milton Keynes and stuff like that they were very very they were very mixed it was a very safe atmosphere everyone talks about you know people just came to dance they wanted to dance um and so so that was really cool but unfortunately because of the country that we live in in Britain um you know black people have not had a great relationship with the police there's this kind of oppressive ah relationship and so the same legacy of

00:09:26.05
Julia Toppin
um the police shutting down like black entertainment black leisure type events kind of um came into jungle right so there was an accusation that you know jungle was fueling like a crack trade um you know it got paired up with like criminality and drug dealing and guns

00:09:30.23
Isobel Anderson
No. Mm hmm.

00:09:46.76
Julia Toppin
um and kind of the media kind of created a discourse around that as well because it's sexy right you know it sells newspapers all these people in the rave and everyone's taking crack and i always say well you know if everyone was taking crack where are all the crack babies like where are all like the crack addicts there aren't any right so so um you know i think that kind of proves that a lot of those theories were were a bit false and so you had this thing where um you know, jungle raves are being over policed, right? And raves are getting shut down, and that costs money. And there was kind of a concerted effort to disassociate the music um from the black elements of the of the audience, the black elements of the sound or the but the black people in the rave, the black culture in the rave, right? And so there was this kind of you rebranding is probably the most basic way of calling it of

00:10:46.41
Julia Toppin
john and of Jungle into Drum and Bass. A lot of people will go, oh, the music evolved. ah However, when you look at it in a more, ah well you know, you could the music did evolve and it was splintering into lots of different spaces. um But there was almost a shadow ban on playing Jungle and Jungle Raves and lots of Jungle DJs and producers literally kind of lost livelihoods overnight and went to work in IT and whatever. and And a lot of them have come back now, now we've got this renaissance.

00:11:19.44
Julia Toppin
But, you know, they just, you know, couldn't get the work, couldn't get the gigs. And there was this effort from the labels and from the music press of rebranding drum and basses like it's an intelligent form of jungle.

00:11:33.14
Julia Toppin
It's for the, you know, aficionados, the real, real musicians. Right. And so.

00:11:38.88
Isobel Anderson
Mm.

00:11:40.09
Julia Toppin
And that kind of went on and drum um and over time, you know, Jungle almost got erased, because even I'll admit that when I started researching Jungle, I called it a sub-genre of drum and bass. And then all the Junglers were like, no, no, you know, that's, Jungle's the mothership, you know. And then, and then when I started digging a bit more, I was like, oh my God, yeah. So we're in this scenario where most people think that Jungle is a sub-genre of drum and bass when it was the original.

00:12:08.29
Julia Toppin
you know And so that's one of the things that I do try to counteract and in my writings and and doing podcasts like this as well.

00:12:08.41
Isobel Anderson
oh

00:12:15.12
Julia Toppin
um And so what really happened was Jungle kind of just, it went very mainstream. There was a very ah successful song, ah and b MB and General Eevee is called Incredible and you know that got into top 10 maybe top 5 very successful tune I mean even you could drop that tune in any place today and almost everybody knows it it's a very well known track probably the most famous jungle track

00:12:33.65
Isobel Anderson
Oh wow.

00:12:44.48
Isobel Anderson
Well, I'm going to suggest that we just, I'm going to put in like insert about 10 seconds now of incredible, because that's the, everyone will know that jungler's massive sort of hook with it, won't they?

00:12:56.18
Julia Toppin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:56.89
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, so I'm gonna i'm go to insert a little bit there. So we've just heard a little bit of incredible.

00:13:02.10
Julia Toppin
Yeah.

00:13:02.23
Isobel Anderson
So yeah, so we so we got our kind of, at least on this post podcast episode, that's our first taste of Jungle for the conversation.

00:13:07.85
Julia Toppin
Yeah, of jungle. Yeah, so that's like the peak, that was peak jungle years, right?

00:13:09.50
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:13:13.43
Julia Toppin
um And there was lots of politics that went around that in terms of like, egos and because General Levy was quoted as saying that he was the king of jungle and he said he didn't say that and you know again the people tried to shadow band playing the record and doah du-da-da but none of that really worked because it is like the most successful jungle record of all time um and so yeah this kind of rebrand happened and then and with that the music kind of changed a lot of the sort of black foundational elements of jungle were stripped out

00:13:48.39
Julia Toppin
and And you got this, ah what you get, you got a much more, you know, the computer technology got more, there were more people from across Europe, you know, noisier from the Netherlands, people from all over um making drum and bass, right?

00:14:03.74
Julia Toppin
um And it got just a little bit more electronic, a bit more synthesised. And that's kind of the sound that we know today, right? So for me, people are always like, oh, jungle drum and bass is all the same.

00:14:11.25
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:14:14.08
Julia Toppin
It's like, no, it's not all the same. I could you know, the drums and jungles sound like real sample breakbeats and the bass is much heavier.

00:14:20.02
Isobel Anderson
Mmhmm.

00:14:22.65
Julia Toppin
um Whereas with, ah you know, drum and bass, I always have the joke that drum and bass doesn't have any bass in it because the bass line's always almost completely removed.

00:14:36.63
Isobel Anderson
ah

00:14:37.37
Julia Toppin
um And, you know, the drums are very, very synthesised now, you know, they are still 175, but they don't have that kind of

00:14:42.03
Isobel Anderson
Okay.

00:14:45.88
Julia Toppin
you know that edge it's a difference between you know when you put a record on you know a bit of vinyl and you get that ah original sound um having said that you know i love there's loads of drum and bass that i love i love drum and bass i love jungle i love the fact that now there's been this renaissance which i guess we'll talk about a bit later in that you know jungle has become fashionable again i mean things go up and down because jungle it never died it just went underground And then from about, I'd say 2016, 2017, it started bubbling up into the mainstream again, into the consciousness. I'd say the mainstream dance music consciousness is not totally in the charts. Charts. Although there's a lot of drum and bass. I mean, Chase and Status basically own the charts these days.

00:15:32.98
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, so so what you're saying is like, even though Jungle very much came from the black community and particularly like black British music culture, um it was gradually that was sort of stripped out of the genre um to the extent where the audiences became overwhelmingly white and male.

00:15:57.01
Isobel Anderson
but also that the actual sonic character of Jungle changed. And one thing that like I would say, just as someone who I don't know um a massive amount about Jungle or Drum & Bass, but just from what I do know of them, with Jungle, I associate that with having really audible black voices in it.

00:16:10.47
Julia Toppin
Mm.

00:16:17.10
Isobel Anderson
Whereas drum and bass, I don't. And drum and bass, I do see like it's more of a kind of, like you say, more of an electronic sound, maybe sometimes even like quite a synth synthetic sound.

00:16:26.22
Julia Toppin
Mmm.

00:16:27.22
Isobel Anderson
Not all the time, like that obviously there's tracks that have lots of samples and and voices and all those things, but even even from ah just looking at the kind of the presence of people. in those two genres um in jungle like the tracks that we've got on the playlist that are going to go on um with the show notes for this even even think about it in terms of voice like those those voices become less and less present in drummer bass

00:16:52.73
Julia Toppin
Yeah, absolutely, like one of my favorite, ju probably one of my favorite jungle tracks um is like Air Freshner by Tom and Jerry and um you know that's kind of got like a rare groove, like an old soul sample in it.

00:17:07.83
Julia Toppin
um and and then it's also got that reggae bass line and the sort of MC toasting on it as well as for me it's kind of it's a great track because it's got little bits of everything that's like my if you know if I had to point to one track and say what was 90s jungle I'd be like this one this is if I can only pick one track I'd pick that one um whereas you know in the beginning when the jungle sound was just coming into being right You've got a track like ah Lenny D. Ice, VIE, which has got this Algerian chant in it. and um But what separated it from like Rave and like and Techno and and the dance and the sort of you know hip house and all of that stuff was just that really heavy bass line that just settled into the track.

00:18:02.03
Julia Toppin
So, yeah, so for me, I mean, I've always loved bass. I guess that probably comes from culture. You know, I've grown up listening to reggae and listening, you know, sound systems and arts that have had like massive parties of these speakers as big as wardrobes.

00:18:16.09
Julia Toppin
You know, I've grown up in that.

00:18:16.98
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:18:17.82
Julia Toppin
And so for me, I find it very difficult to dance to music, almost impossible, actually, I'd say, that doesn't have a really good bass line. You know, I need the bass.

00:18:30.06
Julia Toppin
um So while I do love a bit of jump up and a bit of tweaky jump bass and ambient stuff and the you know and the the liquid has more soulful vocals in it. um Yeah I just feel like the richness in the warmth that's what one of my research subjects said you know the warmth had gone out and there was a period where Drum and bass got very screechy, very technical. um People say it's when it went dark, but actually a lot of my female research subjects actually like the dark sounds, right? So that wasn't the issue. it The issue was kind of the sort of super electronic, cold, harsh sounds and you know and they're undanceable. So a lot of people a lot of audiences, the women,

00:19:20.61
Julia Toppin
and a lot of the black people they moved it a garage was bubbling at that point and so a lot of them just like just on mass just started going to the garage raves and also what was interesting about garage is that in the early days jungle was a very glamorous thing you know you get dressed up and go out and champagne and and all that kind of stuff and I think a garage kind of brought that back that sort of glamour and getting dressed up and you know, and sweating it all out. um So yeah, i so i so it makes sense that the audience did move in that direction. um And it's sad really, because like the other day I put on a jungle rave ah in the summer, and I was in Peckham, and I was going to this pub, which is like a black home pub in Peckham called The Prince of Peckham, it's a great place. And, you know, we were giving out flyers and they were like, oh, jungle, that's not for us, you know, and it's

00:20:16.21
Julia Toppin
And it feels sad, you know, that a lot of people, um a lot of young black people would have no concept of the history of jungle.

00:20:25.57
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:20:25.83
Julia Toppin
Right. And the fact that, it you know, um well, because I mean, the history of drum and bass is the history of jungle, because, you know, you've got the jungle and then we go into the drum and bass and then now we're at the stage where people like me and other people will just call it jungle drum and bass.

00:20:40.47
Julia Toppin
Right. So because it's sort of crossing over and mixing and

00:20:41.26
Isobel Anderson
Right, okay.

00:20:44.58
Julia Toppin
um a whole new generation of people that are really exciting like Tim Reaper and Cheryl does a bit of jungle, a bit of footwork and Nia Archives. We've got all these new exciting people picking up the sound and what's interesting about that is um Mantra who is one of the founders of EQ50 which is like an advocacy group for women in jungle drum base. We'll talk about that a bit later. She said that because jungle sort of peaked in like 93 94 it had this ridiculous peak and then obviously there were issues with it and it kind kind of got shadow bound she said she felt that it never really got its never really got its time

00:21:28.94
Julia Toppin
And so now it's really exciting to have all these new producers thinking, oh, this sounds great. You know, I could make this. I can do stuff with this. And like one of the tracks that we're going to listen to, um you know, is like Brazilian Soaker Jungle, you know, ah which is just amazing, you know.

00:21:36.46
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:21:46.82
Julia Toppin
and And I think it's one of those innovative forms that there's so much that you can do with it.

00:21:47.15
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:21:52.47
Julia Toppin
um It's quite an exciting, I mean, drum and bass is exciting as well. But obviously, like, you know, my heart belongs in jungle. It's like people say, you know, I love drum and bass, but I'm a junglist.

00:22:03.25
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm.

00:22:03.82
Julia Toppin
So when I was writing, I think I was tweeting something and I said, oh, um um I write about jungle history. And they were like, no, Julia, you're a junglist historian.

00:22:14.83
Julia Toppin
And I'm like, oh, I like that, you know, so that's become, and then because I love Megan Thee Stallion, who's one of my favourite rappers, um I've become Julia THE Jungleist Historian.

00:22:16.50
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:22:24.82
Isobel Anderson
Oh, I love that.

00:22:24.99
Julia Toppin
So that's like why my unofficial title.

00:22:28.83
Isobel Anderson
that's That's really, that's a great title. So I'd take it. um So Julia, one thing I would love to ask you, just picking up on what you talked about before, um could you tell us a little bit about that sound system culture that you mentioned? Because it feels like that's really key for jungle emerging. And you know, what ah for anyone that's not familiar with that, what is that sound system culture? What does that mean?

00:22:58.35
Julia Toppin
okay that's great oh you know what i feel like i want to reach for my book except that it's propping up something um okay so so

00:23:05.05
Isobel Anderson
And we can link we can link to any like references that you think would help people find out more about anything we talk about. So like I'm happy to link to a book if you've got one.

00:23:13.38
Julia Toppin
Yeah, yeah, because I recently wrote a chapter for a book that went with this British Library exhibition called Beyond the Baseline.

00:23:14.13
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:23:20.24
Julia Toppin
It's the catalogue, and if you really, if you're interested in black music, I mean, it's it's not too expensive as a catalogue, it's about £30, but it really goes through all of the different genres of music, of black British music.

00:23:32.55
Julia Toppin
um And I did a chapter called, I think it's called Bass, Tech and Rhythm. And what was really interesting about it is um I went back to look at like the original sound systems and how the sound system was formed and what was fascinating about it, there was this guy, I can't remember his name unfortunately, um and he was in the RAF and as like a radio engineer and then so when he went back to Jamaica he used that technology that he'd learnt to create this first sound system that would amplify them playing records which is just

00:24:07.67
Julia Toppin
fascinating and then obviously had the emcees toasting and so um he was very interested well he was key without him there probably would not be sound system culture and i found that out when i was doing some research which is great so sound system culture is like comes from jamaica and basically you would get it's almost like a sound clash is like a competition right between two different sounds so a sound would be a collective of people you'd have your emcees and your djs um

00:24:08.09
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:24:37.66
Julia Toppin
and they would build these amazing giant speakers that could amplify the music you know to to play outside right um and they would use what we would call like valve technology right to to create like these this great pure bass sound right this kind of enveloping kind of bass a lot of people talk about feeling like being in the womb and you know just getting wrapped up in it um and so yeah so basically there was you'd have like the sound system and everybody would come and listen to the sound system and they play these things called rhythms and a lot of the rhythms were um you know like there's the dembo rhythm if you want to look that up you'll you'll know them when you hear them because a lot of pop music emulate

00:25:24.35
Julia Toppin
ah some of these rhythms as well, right? um And so it's like it's it's basically like having an instrumental and then the MCs are chatting over the mic and like it'll be like who's got the best, who's got the best tracks, who's got the best sound system, who's got the best MC and so they would kind of compete you know so you've got sounds like Coxson International is a very well-known sound that people can look up You've got Abishanti, they're very well known.

00:25:53.22
Julia Toppin
These are all sound systems that are still doing stuff here in the UK now. Um, and so, yeah, so that is sound system culture. And so obviously when, well, not obviously, sorry. So when, when we had the, the immigration after the wall, post-war immigration, right?

00:26:09.01
Julia Toppin
A lot of people, you know, they brought their culture with them, right? And started building sound systems over here to have private parties, because again,

00:26:12.39
Isobel Anderson
And.

00:26:18.40
Julia Toppin
like a lot of black people wouldn't have weren't having access to like the majority white leisure spaces due to like racism and and then stuff like that. So they would have parties in like um halls and in people's living rooms where they'd or they'd strip out somebody's flat and put all the furniture in the bedroom and then set up a sound um system. So like if Steve McQueen in Lovers Rock, although I have a few issues with that episode, it the setup of the sound system is is is what it kind of looks like but obviously there are other things going on there, we won't I won't go down that road.

00:26:53.20
Isobel Anderson
Uh.

00:26:56.31
Julia Toppin
um So yeah, so that's like a sound system and so

00:26:56.42
Isobel Anderson
Uh.

00:27:01.01
Julia Toppin
when with jungle in the beginning you would you know the same thing would be created you'd have these giant speakers that's why the bass is so important right because you've got to get it it's got to be super loud like but it's also it can't it doesn't can't distort it's got to be clear and sound clean

00:27:15.24
Isobel Anderson
Uh.

00:27:18.37
Julia Toppin
um and so this kind of apprenticeship of engineering sound is something that's like been passed down culturally and passed down um you know transatlanticly it's gone from you know over in Jamaica to here and so yeah sound system culture is great you know I mean you know people would literally follow a sound around like stone love and they're all coming back to me now the names are different sounds and you know people would just go to that sound every week because that would that they'd have these little communities and everybody would know each other and everybody would hang out and have a good time have a drink and you know romances would bloom and so on so yeah that's like sound system culture um and yeah and so jungle emulated a lot of that took a lot of that heritage um and so not i suppose not so much now but i mean having said that drum and bass is a very

00:27:59.17
Isobel Anderson
one

00:28:13.81
Julia Toppin
For me, I think it's quite a family oriented community, um you know, that maybe sometimes dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless.

00:28:24.12
Julia Toppin
So it's still there's still a bit of that.

00:28:24.27
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:28:26.32
Julia Toppin
um But I suppose the labels have kind of swapped over for the sound systems, if that makes sense. And everything is much more commercial and much less community based.

00:28:39.40
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Cause what you're describing with the sound system culture, it's, it's not a packageable product, is it? It's like, it's an experience that it's not like a record company where you are, you're pressing X number of vinyls that you then sell. And it's, it's an experience that you have to kind of go to. And it's just, it's just not about a product in the same way. It's about a collective experience of that one night.

00:29:05.14
Julia Toppin
Yeah, exactly.

00:29:06.22
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah, okay.

00:29:07.84
Julia Toppin
Yes.

00:29:09.41
Isobel Anderson
Well, thank you. so Thank you for kind of, you know, just expanding on that because I feel like that's really important to get a sense for. um Yeah, that the kind of environment that jungle might have been coming out of.

00:29:21.55
Isobel Anderson
um and because it kind of comes back to a little bit and I'd like to get into this now but a little bit about what you were saying about the sonic characteristics of jungle and the fact that you know that there is a lot of um samples and also part of it being like actual voice recorded in but samples of real drum breaks, things like that, that are kind of pulled together that you can imagine in that sound system setup. That makes a lot of sense and that you've pulled, ah you've got like a loop of a beat and then you play that and then, you know, over that sound system. Whereas with the kind of evolution of that genre into other things like drum and bass and then later dubstep.

00:30:01.80
Isobel Anderson
It's outside of that. it's It's being made predominantly inside a DAW, inside a computer.

00:30:07.62
Julia Toppin
That's right, yeah.

00:30:07.62
Isobel Anderson
So it kind of makes a lot of sense to to really understand little at least a little bit about that sound system culture and how that has evolved and that it was very much a physical thing that people physically came to.

00:30:18.42
Isobel Anderson
and And these sound systems that I'm presuming were kind of like, in so in a lot of instances, kind of botched together and a kind of bit of a hodgepodge of like, what can we bring together as a collective?

00:30:30.79
Isobel Anderson
And then meticulously like maintaining that over time.

00:30:34.33
Julia Toppin
Yeah, that's it. I think in the beginning it was more like, you know, bringing, yeah, bringing the elements together. And then yes, the then the kind of refinement came in terms of like, you know, there are people that, that craft, that craft those speaker boxes now and that, and, you know, um, and engineers that are crafting like the perfect amp system and stuff like that.

00:30:39.89
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:30:47.46
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:30:53.76
Julia Toppin
And actually you just one point I wanted to go back to on the sound system culture, because we're focusing on women here.

00:30:58.66
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:31:00.79
Julia Toppin
There's an amazing.

00:31:01.00
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:31:02.65
Julia Toppin
a reggae sound collective called Inzinga Sounds and ah they've been running for well decades, decades and decades and my good friend June Reed is there's two female DJs that run that and ah one of them is is my good friend June Reed so if you're interested in female sound system culture then um you can look up Inzinga Sound

00:31:05.14
Isobel Anderson
Mhm.

00:31:27.39
Isobel Anderson
Nice. Okay. Brilliant. and Well, we will link to that in the show notes. So I would love to now get into what what are the sonic characteristics that define jungle?

00:31:38.70
Isobel Anderson
um We've talked a little bit about some of them, but but maybe we can kind of build from the ground up. So from what you're talking about, you know, for you, Julia, one of the most important parts is the baseline.

00:31:50.00
Julia Toppin
Yeah, so the bass line's normally like a heavy dub or a reggae style bass line.

00:31:50.63
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:31:57.47
Julia Toppin
I mean, it can be more inventive now. um But I mean, for me, what's really important is like it doesn't have to be crisp necessarily. It's always difficult describing sounds, isn't it?

00:32:09.02
Julia Toppin
But for me, the bass has to be clean, you know, and and and driving, almost like bullying driving.

00:32:11.61
Isobel Anderson
Right. Yeah.

00:32:16.20
Julia Toppin
So like you hear that bass line and then and you have to do Right. And a lot of those bass lines could, as I said before, come from reggae, but, you know, they can come from, you know, different places as well, like, you know, dub and scar and, you know, um yeah. So good bass is very important. And then for me, I prefer the, you know, the Amen Breaks, which was like a drum sample that was taken from a track, a soul track, I think, by the Amen Brothers. um And

00:32:49.95
Julia Toppin
Yeah, it is. There's a few. There's the Amen break. There's the Think break, which comes from Lynn Collins Think track. And then oh there's one more.

00:33:00.25
Julia Toppin
I think it's called the Apache. There's three really famous drum breaks.

00:33:04.65
Isobel Anderson
uh-huh

00:33:06.80
Julia Toppin
And most of the songs that normally have one of those in them, one of one of those drum breaks and they're looped. And they just sound, you know, they sound like drums, you know, they might be a bit faster, a bit slower, but not super fast.

00:33:20.61
Julia Toppin
Like jungle is more like a 140, 150 kind of pace, which is not too bad. So it's almost like not quite double your heart rate. Whereas, you know, drum and bass is like 175 BPM.

00:33:34.59
Isobel Anderson
Mm hmm.

00:33:34.84
Julia Toppin
Like, and that's why I think sometimes it's too, it's too fast. Like you can't really, you know, what are you going to do? Like literally just jog on the spot. Like it's.

00:33:43.37
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:33:44.16
Julia Toppin
You know, whereas with jungle, if you half time dancing to jungle, right, then it it matches your heartbeat, really.

00:33:50.11
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:33:51.83
Julia Toppin
Do you know what I mean? Matches like the average heartbeat. So it's anat it's natural to be able to dance to it like that. But um yeah, so so we've got cool drum loops, cool drum samples, break beats.

00:34:06.29
Julia Toppin
We've got great.

00:34:07.28
Isobel Anderson
And just, um sorry, just to interrupt there, Julia, because you you're saying about the bass, like that it's it's not something that's all washy.

00:34:09.75
Julia Toppin
Yeah.

00:34:13.67
Isobel Anderson
It's like really clean. Something that I think really carries through is with that is in the drum beat as well, right? Like those those samples, they keep they they are kept pretty clean, aren't they?

00:34:22.07
Julia Toppin
yeah yeah they sound crisp and clean you know you can hear them you can hear you know you hear the snares here the there's any symbols in there you can hear everything yeah yes

00:34:24.99
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:34:29.09
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:34:31.82
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, like particularly there, a lot of the time is like super clean.

00:34:35.48
Julia Toppin
yeah yeah yeah

00:34:36.03
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah. Which, yeah, which again is is like, it's obviously different to dub and different to, well, potentially, yeah, drum and bass, I guess. But like, yeah, both, both the bass and the, and those drum loops are are really clean, really tight.

00:34:51.71
Julia Toppin
yeah crisp yeah cool and then ah so we'd have we got the bass and drums in place um and then normally ah there would be

00:34:52.38
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Dry and crisp. Yeah. Cool.

00:35:05.86
Julia Toppin
um you know some kind of sample right and and that's where the jungle gets really interesting right because the samples could come from pop you get like donna they come from like your rhythmics like you know that sort of new romantic sounds they could come from house they could come from soul they come from jazz they come from rare groove they could come from like the movie samples like there's a great track called ricky where It's taken a sample from ah Boys and John Singleton's Boys in the Hood where somebody shouts, Ricky, it's this traumatic moment before this poor guy gets shot. um there's theres There's a whole, ah for Halloween a few years ago, I did like a special show. um I can add the link to it as well. And it was all horror tracks. So it was all like jungle tracks that took horror samples from like it and from all sorts of other things as well.

00:36:04.44
Julia Toppin
um Yeah, so the samples help and then some tracks will have like some emcees vocalizing on the actual jungle track. So you've got, you know, you know, you've got and general levy doing incredible. Another massive track would have been um UK Apache and shy effects original nutter. um And then what else? What else is in the jungle? every And then the the sort of then the kind of time stretching, um,

00:36:35.97
Julia Toppin
sort of futuristic kind of element of it where they would just you know up pitch and down pitch and slow down and speed up stuff from different samples just to play with those sounds right and then layering all that different stuff together is is what makes jungle which is why when it came out people oh my god what's this like

00:37:03.55
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. I mean, it I was just thinking about, you know, that sort of sampling culture and that, and also like messing with those samples. um Were people who were kind of putting in jungle, like developing, when jungle was developing, was that coming from hip hop or was that coming from happy hardcore?

00:37:23.55
Isobel Anderson
Because like there's a lot of like, there's a lot of genres where that was happening at the same time, weren't there?

00:37:26.57
Julia Toppin
yeah Yeah and see that's the thing I think for me jungle really is like the proper multicultural melting pot music because you had you know the ravers you know a lot of people would not a lot of people but there's a documentary where there's a girl and they say what's jungle and she says oh it's like raga and rave and it is i understand why she would say that because she's talking about the the you know the baselines and emcees and she's talking about the rave and like you bring these things together it was more complicated than that because there was a whole political thing about reggae trying to take over jungle and

00:38:01.17
Julia Toppin
won't go down that road but um yeah i think the beauty of it all was that you know you can't listen to jungle and not hear jungle techno and listen to jungle and then then go back to techno or hip house which was like hip hop coming over from america mixing with house coming from like obviously originally chicago but via like europe and belgium and and and stuff like that and so you there's definitely that european dance music sound within it, you know, 100%.

00:38:35.95
Isobel Anderson
yeah and The other thing, um just so like listening to the tracks and the playlist that you've been um like helping curate but put together, um the other thing about the drumbeats is there's a lot of symbols. like When you get into, let me play on

00:39:01.51
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, like in it, say in we are IE and I'm just listening to like two minutes in, there's just a a lot more kind of symbol than normal, if that makes sense.

00:39:13.90
Julia Toppin
Yeah, it's just.

00:39:14.17
Isobel Anderson
And now I'm kind of hearing it. That is definitely something I associate with that jungle but beat sound.

00:39:19.33
Julia Toppin
Yeah.

00:39:19.28
Isobel Anderson
It's like really kind of crashy, but my on the choruses, I mean, or like what we think of as choruses, you know, that kind of really crashy, like smashing symbol, you know,

00:39:25.44
Julia Toppin
Hmm. Hmm. I think it's high energy music, you know, it kind of um it reminds me a lot of and I think um ah Diego from For Hero, who were also, a lot of people recorded on different names, but Tom and Jerry, he was part of the Tom and Jerry of the track that we've talked about.

00:39:50.99
Julia Toppin
you know He talked about taking some influence from like public enemy and the fact that they had that kind of chaotic sound, right?

00:39:57.55
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:39:58.64
Julia Toppin
and They wanted it to sound like, whoa, what's going on? you know And that had a lot of symbols. I think that the sort of crashing of the symbols

00:40:06.61
Isobel Anderson
It's intense.

00:40:07.09
Julia Toppin
is definitely a little yeah marker of that kind of, okay, we're going to get crazy. Because even when we think about silly things like The Muppet Show and that guy that was um on the draw, I can't remember what that character's name was, but but it was a but he was always going crazy on the symbols, wasn't he?

00:40:17.86
Isobel Anderson
Oh, what? I can't remember, yeah. But I know, I know the one you mean.

00:40:22.71
Julia Toppin
It was like...

00:40:22.95
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah yeah no it has got that real intense kind of because it is like like you're right it's really clean like the bass and the drums are really clean but then I was thinking like what but something does sound washy and it's that symbol like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam and yeah it's it's super intense um Yeah so that's kind of interesting like hearing you talk about all the different sonic components and and I know we could go deeper for sure but it's good to kind of have that broken down a bit and obviously we're we're playing little excerpts as we go so people can hear that. um I'd love to now just get your um

00:41:00.80
Isobel Anderson
your kind of thoughts on the contribution that women played ah both in terms of like jungle evolving but then also women today in the jungle scene because you quite rightly have said jungle is still happening and still developing and it's even having a bit of resurgence.

00:41:20.31
Julia Toppin
um Yeah, gathering all my thoughts.

00:41:26.42
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:41:26.56
Julia Toppin
So because it was a tenet of my research, you know, where are the women, right? When I first started my research, I didn't think there were any women in Jungle Drum and Bass genuinely, right?

00:41:32.72
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:41:38.00
Julia Toppin
I didn't really remember.

00:41:38.07
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:41:39.28
Julia Toppin
I mean, obviously, I raved a lot, so I didn't remember a lot of raving. ah You get those guys that were like, yeah, I was at Jungle Fever fifth anniversary party and middle and I'm like, this is me.

00:41:47.05
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:41:51.64
Julia Toppin
I was out every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night for four years. Right.

00:41:56.09
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:41:56.49
Julia Toppin
I was probably there, but who knows?

00:42:00.01
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:42:00.19
Julia Toppin
Right. But you know what men are like.

00:42:02.90
Isobel Anderson
ah

00:42:03.07
Julia Toppin
But so in the beginning, I didn't know. And then I started as I started doing this research for my M.A. dissertation, you know, that's when I discovered um chemistry and storm.

00:42:14.53
Julia Toppin
who uh were a duo well were are they were a duo um and part of metalheads which was goldie's label i didn't know that they helped set up metalheads like you would think that metalheads was just goldie sorry my cat he's there sorry i was rewind because yeah he was i tried to kind of stop him from scratching me it didn't work um you would think that like

00:42:29.86
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:42:40.22
Julia Toppin
you know when you think about jungle drum and bass you get the same names you get Goldie comes up as number one you get jumping duck frost and you get DJ hype and DJ hazard and Kenny Ken and maybe they'll say uh DJ rap right and then maybe storm right chemistry and storm are an amazing duo but unfortunately uh chemistry passed in in the tragic accident while they're both very young um

00:42:45.05
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

00:43:07.02
Julia Toppin
and Storm continued on her own. But they were instrumental in setting up the Metalhead's label, right, which I didn't know, right.

00:43:14.57
Isobel Anderson
Uh-huh.

00:43:15.64
Julia Toppin
And I found an article on The Guardian actually, because they, they used to have like a sort of anniversary um rave for to commemorate chemi.

00:43:27.13
Julia Toppin
I think they did it for about 10 years in a row. And um there was an article about it. And that was how I found out about chemistry, right.

00:43:33.51
Isobel Anderson
Okay.

00:43:34.79
Julia Toppin
And I was like, wait a minute, Um, what else is out there? So then I started to really dig, right? And then I found out about DJ flight and she was also part of metal heads. And, and I started finding out about all these different women producers and DJs that I'd never heard of before. Because when I interviewed, I interviewed two women, amazing women, and they were like, Oh, you must talk to DJ flight. And I'm like, who, you know, and then,

00:44:02.22
Julia Toppin
you know, I started doing research and found out that Flight had had like the first drum and bass show on Radio One and I'm just like, you know, just complete erasure. Right. um And so, um you know, once I'd unearthed ah all of these things for my MA thesis, I wanted to continue to kind of unearth these things.

00:44:12.38
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:44:24.31
Julia Toppin
Right. So what I kind of discovered in my research is that in terms of um there's this whole thing where well it's just basically it's patriarchy really patriarchy misogyny in a nutshell right so the issues are you know men too many men I say most they'll get upset but it's kind of most thinking that you know women can't handle technology and science you know and that we're emotional and you know we don't want to collect records and we don't want to go to the record shop and hang out and talk about the the the hi-hat or the cymbal crashes on this you know I mean that's like man stuff um so there's all that ah you know uh sexism and those kind of patriarchal ideas

00:44:46.76
Isobel Anderson
Wow.

00:45:12.20
Julia Toppin
um They're not, ah there's a whole kind of friendship network in terms of developing skills, a DJ and a producer that women couldn't penetrate because it'd be guys going to other guys' houses and stuff like that. um And not really, you know, creating these kind of homosocial spaces, right? So, you know, women's response to that was to form like groups of their own, you know, of social groups train themselves.

00:45:37.13
Julia Toppin
um and then when they did break through there was this whole kind of almost like stereotype you had to be kind of this super sexy kitten like oh i can't remember what i called them i i i put them into three categories from a really good article um from another female academic that looks at um there's like tammy gaudier that looks at um electronic music and um i can't say her name hell vita reach gold I think but they're amazing and they they write about women in that music and you know and all these issues that women have right the barriers because that's what I was looking at what are the barriers that are in place that are stopping women and then there were women that had that went and had families didn't come back or you know just live lived life and didn't come back um

00:46:25.47
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm.

00:46:27.05
Julia Toppin
So there was lots of things, but one of my greatest discoveries was discovering like EQ50, right, which is um this organization that DJ Flight and Mantra, MC Chikaboo, Sweet Pea and there are a few others, they're like kind of like the core founding members and they've, ah it's going to be, ah yeah, they're going to be 10 years old ah soon and well they're there as like an advocacy group to help women in jungle drum and bass but they've done so much work like when I interviewed them in 2019 you know they were just about to start um no they no they hadn't even done the mentorship then when I first interviewed them they were just doing kind of like meetups

00:47:12.53
Julia Toppin
where we're getting everyone together. There's a great picture on their website and it's like one of the meetups that we did while I was writing my thesis actually and everybody's in the picture and it's really cool. um And you know, we'd talk about the issues that we'd had and then I found out there were people that had managed and that was another thing. There were a lot of girlfriends that managed DJs and producers, right, that had that professional level skill that never translated into jobs in the industry, people that have been basically being an agent and not realising they're an agent or being a manager or being a booker and not realising that they're doing all of this um executive level work, right?

00:47:53.59
Isobel Anderson
yeah

00:47:53.86
Julia Toppin
um And though some of them did, you know, people like Sarah Sandy, who really needs to get her flowers one day, a very seminal manager, promoter, um who's still going, she's got her Ravenite Swerve, um very instrumental in setting up Drum & Bass and Jungle Nights like in the West End and stuff like that. um You know that people just don't talk about you know and so for me, but you know my project is that you know I want to bring all these

00:48:26.88
Julia Toppin
um voices that have been silenced and people that have been erased like into the light so i had this like i'm gonna call it a limited edition podcast series because i don't know if i'm ever gonna find the time to get back there but we've got quite a lot of it there's like 30 episodes um

00:48:40.07
Isobel Anderson
and

00:48:44.33
Julia Toppin
So they're there, you know, and I've interviewed people like Chickaboos, first female queer MC, um you know, Sweet Pea, who's up and coming producer, I've interviewed all of EQ 50 together, Penny, who used to write about Jungle back in the day and now DJ's, you know, so, um you know, I'm trying to do my bit to kind of uplift the scene, right?

00:48:52.47
Isobel Anderson
Mm. Mm-hmm.

00:49:06.14
Julia Toppin
um

00:49:06.16
Isobel Anderson
Uh huh.

00:49:07.13
Julia Toppin
and you know people like Rap who until I did research I didn't realize that she had one of the most successful drum based albums of all time you know and it's like why am I the one that has to write about that when that was decades ago right so um yeah so there were a lot of issues um and there was this whole idea as well of women like

00:49:18.68
Isobel Anderson
Oh no. Oh no.

00:49:31.07
Julia Toppin
because they know that when they come out into this technical space, I mean, you'll probably know this as well, right?

00:49:36.82
Isobel Anderson
No.

00:49:37.02
Julia Toppin
That men will kind of interfere with the decks when they're on the decks, or if they're in the studio, they'll try and override their decisions. Oh, you don't want to do it like that. You want to do it like this, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so what would happen is women would be at home probably turning themselves into the greatest DJs that ever lived, but they're not having that confidence to come outside and and then and try and get bookings and stuff like that and then because what EQ50 found out when they they had eventually teamed up with um some core drama based labels to do a mentorship and they've done four years of mentorship now and actually Nia Archives I know a track that's on the list she was um one of the very early EQ50 mentees and she's a wildly successful DJ and producer now and you know so they've done

00:50:27.30
Julia Toppin
Things are much better now than they were. um Still baby steps though, but really, and and you know what, I'm sighing because the issue is, is that it doesn't matter what sector you're in, does it? It's like women in, and I've got a friend that's a civil engineer, same problem, even friends that are like in tech, same problems. Anything that's, I guess not like serving or caring, nurturing,

00:50:55.65
Julia Toppin
you know, ah there seems to be such an issue for us to crack through the barrier as like, as like women, and then particularly black women. So for all the issues that women have, black women have almost like 20 fold on top of that as well, because of the compounding issue of like, you know, racism and sexism, which we call misogynoir.

00:51:04.59
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:16.37
Julia Toppin
So yeah, so I mean, I think I'm optimistic, cautiously, because the issue really is sustainability and the men like EQ 50 have sustained themselves for 10 years because it's a collective of women right from different areas um and they keep moving forward and they're committed to it because it's not so like it's a business they're not they're a collective right um

00:51:35.42
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah,

00:51:44.82
Isobel Anderson
yeah. yeah

00:51:47.16
Julia Toppin
And they've all got you know their you know their jobs and stuff like that. And I'm very happy that Flight is now ah back to being a full-time DJ and producer. right She also makes great radio documentaries as well. um She's won some awards.

00:52:00.40
Julia Toppin
um But, you know, they're committed. Right. And what we need is more men. My whole thing, I did a lecture on Monday and and I summed it all up with like the men need to pull up.

00:52:12.85
Julia Toppin
The women are already gathering. Right.

00:52:15.74
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:52:15.84
Julia Toppin
And the men need to pull up. That is those are the two lines that solve the issue, because we're already coming together and talking and sharing and helping each other.

00:52:20.26
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:52:25.53
Julia Toppin
Right. Like, you know, on on your website. So a great course on GarageBand in that. I'm ready, you know, um but there's only so far we can go without these men and predominantly white men in positions of power, right?

00:52:33.34
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Yeah. yeah

00:52:44.22
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:52:44.76
Julia Toppin
And not just white men because a lot of the old school jungle drum and bass MCs are like these old school black guys and I don't see them lifting anyone either, right?

00:52:53.28
Isobel Anderson
and No, but I think you make a really good point, Julia, because it is something that I've talked to.

00:52:53.98
Julia Toppin
So, you know, I'm just calling it as it is. ah um

00:53:02.28
Isobel Anderson
and There's someone else that I know who runs another kind of women in music initiative. And she actually did a study on, you know, women in music initiatives and kind of drew the conclusion that basically that there's a pattern that happens where these initiatives get started up.

00:53:16.53
Isobel Anderson
And because there just isn't the infrastructure or the support that women burn out running them.

00:53:22.13
Julia Toppin
Exactly.

00:53:22.32
Isobel Anderson
because it's just it's not sustainable.

00:53:22.57
Julia Toppin
That's exactly what happens.

00:53:24.90
Isobel Anderson
you know and and they they The only reason they keep going, a lot of them, is because of the sheer tenacity and the kind of collective sisterhood. but it's not enough.

00:53:36.49
Isobel Anderson
you know It's enough to kind of slightly move the conversation to mean that how whoever fortunate women come across these initiatives, get it's it's a little bit easier than it would have been say 20, 30 years ago, but it's not enough to actually level the playing field and ensure that women running these collectives, running these initiatives don't just you know but burn out, break themselves like doing it.

00:53:50.32
Julia Toppin
Hmm.

00:54:00.55
Julia Toppin
ah now 100% that's and what's really in I know go on yeah

00:54:05.05
Isobel Anderson
and and i And I really hear it, sorry to interrupt, but just just to finish the point, I really hear you on when there's layers of marginalisation. It's not just about being a woman, it's about being a black woman or being a disabled woman or being a gay woman or you know whatever it might be.

00:54:21.03
Isobel Anderson
um that you know once you add in those other components, it gets so much harder. um and And I noticed, I mean, I i think this is something, so i'm I'm terrible for just saying what I think, but um i something I think is we need to be a bit more kind of um honest about the women who have managed to punch through into slightly more mainstream places.

00:54:35.56
Julia Toppin
me too

00:54:48.91
Isobel Anderson
And most of the time they're white middle class, thin and well-spoken and also have come up because they spent a lot of time in the service of men. And therefore they've kind of earned their stripes. If you just rock up being a woman with really clear vision, and really fucking talented, really capable, doesn't matter.

00:55:09.99
Isobel Anderson
Have you earned your stripes by serving a man's vision for the last 10 years, you know, or or by playing one of those roles, the whore, the virgin, usually, or the mum a lot of the time, but, you know, um you you can't you can't just be ah a kind of fully capable, fully formed, ready to go.

00:55:28.09
Isobel Anderson
I've got a vision, woman. It's still, I don't believe. I think that is kind of changing, but certainly when I was coming up in my early twenties, no.

00:55:31.94
Julia Toppin
No, I agree.

00:55:38.46
Julia Toppin
Yeah.

00:55:38.55
Isobel Anderson
No way, no way. And unless you were going to play one of those roles that men wanted you to play or, and therefore kind of be in service to another, a man or ah a group of men's vision and pay your dues so that they then but kind of trusted that they, they had the upper hand or something, or they gave you the opportunities. And then, then I think, I think we have to be honest that a lot of women who have managed to come up, this is not their fault, but a lot of women who have managed to come up, they've had to do it that way. But I don't think that gets acknowledged.

00:56:08.56
Julia Toppin
It's really interesting because it is something that was in my research and what I'm going to do is I have written articles that are more formal but I think that my MA thesis is quite an easy read and there's a lot in there and we do talk about the women that do make it and then don't want to be seen as going against the men, right?

00:56:23.72
Isobel Anderson
um

00:56:27.88
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, exactly.

00:56:28.09
Julia Toppin
And and and forming a collective and helping other women. They're like, oh no, no, no, no.

00:56:31.61
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:56:32.88
Julia Toppin
I don't want to be any part of that. Why have we got to do it like that? Why has it got to be like that?

00:56:35.59
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:56:36.60
Julia Toppin
And it's like, it's got to be like that because we're not getting anywhere. Right.

00:56:39.36
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:56:39.64
Julia Toppin
But and then I would add definitely in drum and bass, like, you know, the sex kit and the T-shirt, the lesbian, right.

00:56:49.66
Julia Toppin
A lot of really successful DJs. you know are gay and I feel like some I feel like it's possible I'm gonna throw myself out there that they're playing those kind of lad games do you know what I mean because because they're not um although some of them still people still try to sexually objectify them but it's like that you know they fit into that kind of circle where they can go oh look at that one and look at that one and there's a lot of misogyny in um jungle drum and bass there are a lot of issues there are a lot of people that have been exposed there are lots of people that need to get exposed right um and it never really had its moment i feel like you know we've talked about this before about drum and bass not really having a proper me too moment there've been a few people that have been exposed but there are a lot more out there you know

00:57:28.78
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

00:57:34.59
Isobel Anderson
hu

00:57:46.16
Julia Toppin
um there are a lot more out there and there are people that like annabelle ah gosh Annabelle Ross, she's an Australian journalist but she works out in New York mostly, um she did the exposés on like Eric Marillo and Derek May, um vilified for it um by lots of men naturally um and I know that she's working on a couple, it's a real passion for her and that she's she's working on a couple of pieces that will just be ongoing until

00:57:59.72
Isobel Anderson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. hu

00:58:16.15
Julia Toppin
Till there's enough evidence you like these things tend to come to light in the end, you know um But yeah, I do think that's an issue and that some women feel like they don't want to be associated with a collective movement towards kind of empowering other women and You know, yeah, that's that's a real that's a real problem as well

00:58:38.36
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, and and I think it's not to sort of, um it's not to necessarily like personally attack anyone, but i I guess it's just more for us to acknowledge that we're still in that system, you know, we're still in that system where you're coming through the boys club. How are you going to come through the boys club? Are you going to kind of come at it sideways as a collective of women, which is not ideal. Or are you going to come at it right through the centre as one single woman who plays the right game? That's not ideal. it's not you know You can't really win. But it's I think it's important to acknowledge that we're still we are still in that system.

00:59:14.34
Isobel Anderson
um yeah and And it's interesting hearing your thoughts on like on that in terms of jungle and drum and bass.

00:59:16.55
Julia Toppin
Yeah, definitely.

00:59:22.84
Isobel Anderson
But I'd love to just kind of spend a little bit of time talking about a couple of the women who you've mentioned before and hear their music as well. So you've got on the playlist, you've got um spiritual aura, DJ rap.

00:59:38.63
Isobel Anderson
So we're going to hear like a few seconds of that so people can get a sense for that.

00:59:38.96
Julia Toppin
ah

00:59:43.45
Isobel Anderson
What is it that's significant about DJ rap for you, Julia?

00:59:44.71
Julia Toppin
ah hu

00:59:47.80
Julia Toppin
Oh wow, well DJ Rap is probably the highest profile female jungle drummer based DJ in the world. right she's ah you know She's played by her own rules.

00:59:59.16
Julia Toppin
um and she's had to deal with you know a lot of sexism and exoticization god i've said that but i know that everyone right um well i feel like um dj rap is from i don't want to get it wrong uh like uh

01:00:08.95
Isobel Anderson
Can you, for for people who aren't familiar with what that means, what does exoticization mean in in the terms of music and female artists as well?

01:00:28.13
Julia Toppin
A not traditional English background, maybe like a East Asian background. um You know, I'm going to pause because you said it was OK to pause.

01:00:36.61
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, yeah, it's it's fine, yeah.

01:00:37.21
Julia Toppin
that i't want to get Ah, perfect mean

01:00:52.57
Julia Toppin
ah OK, right, so. DJ Rap, right? ah Probably one of the most highest profile, from actually, I think I'm going to say that again. DJ Rap is the highest profile female DJ in the world, drummer bass, jungle DJ. She'll talk about how she got her start because she kept getting put in room two. That's the other thing that happens to us as women DJs, you don't get put in the main room, you get put in the side room. And she was always getting room two and somebody was supposed to turn up that didn't turn up.

01:01:23.17
Julia Toppin
and the promoter um let her play the main room, she smashed it, and and then the career went on from there. But if this guy hadn't turned up, right, who knows what would have happened?

01:01:32.99
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:01:33.64
Julia Toppin
Anyway, she's a great producer, um she's been around for the longest time, she's still playing, um you know, some, what are we talking about, 30 plus years later, um she's got a really good,

01:01:47.88
Julia Toppin
um very good business head. She was one of the first ah women to get signed by a major label. She was signed to Sony. um She's got her own record label called Proper Talent and she's got a whole, I love DJ rap because she's doing it all the right way.

01:02:04.49
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

01:02:05.22
Julia Toppin
She's got her own website. She's got her own membership. She's she got the whole business wrapped up, right? But with the exoticization, we were talking about that, she's got a cultural heritage from Singapore, right?

01:02:14.36
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:02:18.36
Isobel Anderson
Mm hmm.

01:02:18.98
Julia Toppin
and um And you know, there's that idea of um you know east asian women being like sort of sexier and and being hypersexualized and stuff like that in the same way that that can happen with like black women being sort of othered right and exoticized you know ah being fetishized right as opposed to treated as objects as opposed to subject right and i've i've had an instance where somebody asked me like um to comment on

01:02:29.93
Isobel Anderson
Hmm.

01:02:42.26
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:02:53.93
Julia Toppin
elements of her past and I just refuse to do that I'm like no it's not relevant right we're not bringing that up if that was a guy you wouldn't be asking me to put that in so I'm not so and I actually had to put my foot down and be like no that I'm you know if it means that we don't publish this then that is the hill I'm prepared to be on because there's no point in me writing about women in jungle drum and bass and then demeaning somebody in a book chapter so that's going to live forever right

01:02:58.97
Isobel Anderson
Okay, yeah.

01:03:22.90
Isobel Anderson
Mmhmm.

01:03:23.76
Julia Toppin
So yeah, so I did my bit.

01:03:23.90
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:03:25.98
Julia Toppin
um And so yeah, Rap's great, you know, she charted, she was doing really well, she's still doing really well, she's she's had that career sustainability.

01:03:26.07
Isobel Anderson
Yeah, yeah.

01:03:36.35
Julia Toppin
um but I'm sure that it hasn't been easy. um She's got a biography as well um if anyone's interested um and she just seems like a really lovely person you know she records little videos for the fans if there's an issue with a rave you know she'll do a little she's you know she's got a very good connection to her fan base and knows how to to work that and I really admire that I think she's and also a great producer absolutely brilliant DJ, you know, um Wicked Sets, which is clearly why she's had a career that spans sort of 30 plus years.

01:04:12.78
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Brilliant. And so with DJ rap, when was DJ rap coming up?

01:04:18.31
Julia Toppin
She was coming up in the 90s, DJ Rap was was one of the OG, she was there for the beginning of Jungle.

01:04:24.28
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:04:25.07
Julia Toppin
You know, um so yeah, she's been around for a very, very long time.

01:04:30.99
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, it is, I was just looking as you're talking about her, her website and it is like really impressive how she's kind of put all that together as in like I can really get what you're saying.

01:04:43.42
Isobel Anderson
It's really, she's really on it with her career as an artist, not just the production side of it. So definitely worth people going and checking that out as well.

01:04:53.30
Julia Toppin
Yeah, very good role model for for a female DJ, yeah, in terms of how how that's set up.

01:04:54.64
Isobel Anderson
Hmm. Hmm.

01:04:59.25
Julia Toppin
um You know, she's got albums that she's done, she's got a single. Yeah, so yeah, she's making single since 92, so definitely right at the beginning of of the Jungle Wave.

01:05:12.48
Julia Toppin
Yeah, yeah, so I love her, she's great.

01:05:13.61
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Awesome. And then the other artist that you wanted to give a shout out to was Biana.

01:05:21.22
Julia Toppin
Oh, Nia Archives, the song's called Diana, yeah.

01:05:23.20
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

01:05:24.32
Julia Toppin
yeah

01:05:24.47
Isobel Anderson
nick Yeah. That the song's called Biana and yeah, near archives.

01:05:27.45
Julia Toppin
yeah

01:05:29.13
Isobel Anderson
So yeah.

01:05:29.34
Julia Toppin
Yeah. Yeah, Nia's great.

01:05:30.42
Isobel Anderson
Can you tell us a bit about near archives?

01:05:33.41
Julia Toppin
um She is, she's been, at oh god, it feels like she's been around for a while now, about maybe four or five years. She's very, still very young. But picked up the jungle sound, decided it was the one for her, and um has definitely been part of what I call the jungle nascent, right?

01:05:52.33
Julia Toppin
This jungle renaissance.

01:05:52.39
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:05:53.79
Julia Toppin
um you know She loves jungle, she makes great jungle. um She ah was one of the early EQ 50 mentees and I believe she was mentored by DJ Flight. And she's been adopted by the community and because she's clearly very, very talented, um she was you know making music um when she got when she became um a mentee. I think she was with V Records.

01:06:22.49
Julia Toppin
ah which is Brian G and Jumbo Jack Frost's label, but then quickly caught the attention of the majors. She signed to Ireland, I believe. um I was amazed when I went to the Beyonce concert and like I was hearing Jungle in Tottenham Stadium.

01:06:37.47
Julia Toppin
I'm like, what's going on? And then lo and behold, it turned out that, you know, she'd been chosen to open for Beyonce. And I think that that speaks volumes, you know, because these things don't.

01:06:47.70
Julia Toppin
It's Beyonce, you know, everything is like a deliberate choice. So I thought that was amazing.

01:06:50.99
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:06:52.68
Julia Toppin
um And she's touring the world. She's having, she's got her first album out. She's having some amazing success and and she manages to, you know, she's put, I suppose there's a part of me that wants to say a new spin on an older sound, but I think she's, but for me, she makes stuff that actually does sound like jungle, you know.

01:07:13.03
Julia Toppin
So it's, you know, it's really refreshing to see young producers pick this up.

01:07:13.17
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:07:18.65
Julia Toppin
um And I know that there are lots of other, like as someone that's a lecturer, um that works with people producing. There's just so many young people making jungle now. It's very exciting.

01:07:27.53
Isobel Anderson
oh Yeah. And do you think that there's more women making jungle than there ever has been before?

01:07:35.09
Julia Toppin
You know, that's a really good question. I actually think no.

01:07:41.78
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:07:41.87
Julia Toppin
And the reason why I think that is because there are a lot of women, I'm unearthing all these women that were making jungle back in the day, DJs and producers, Tamsin, I'm trying to track these women down, you know some of them are like in different countries and stuff like that but um there are a lot of women making jungle but they've just they've just been they've they've just been erased um and so I think that

01:08:06.90
Isobel Anderson
yeah

01:08:10.03
Julia Toppin
There are a lot of women making jungle now, ah much more openly, it's much more democratic now, you know, you've got your computer at home and you can get your jungle sample pack. So there probably are more women making jungle now, but it felt almost like a maybe yes, maybe no.

01:08:24.92
Julia Toppin
But I think that there were a lot of women making and producing jungle ah back in the day that, um you know, even if they only had one or two great tracks,

01:08:33.29
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Uh huh.

01:08:36.26
Julia Toppin
that we need to kind of bring back to the surface that's part of my sort of ongoing research work.

01:08:40.61
Isobel Anderson
Hmm. Great. Okay. So if people are listening to this and like, Oh, I want to find out more about Julia's work, where can they go to read what you've written about this Julia or, you know, access anything you've collated?

01:08:57.29
Julia Toppin
um I've got a Patreon ah which I don't really charge for because ah just moralistically I wasn't putting enough new content on it to be charging people or anything. Maybe one day i' I'll start charging again when I get better which probably never happened. My MA thesis is on my Patreon account which is just like patreon.com slash Julia Toppin I think. It might be miss Toppin you know what I'm gonna check because I think I was gonna change it um But I'll give you a link for that.

01:09:27.08
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:09:27.38
Julia Toppin
so And I think for somebody that's genuinely interested um and in all the ways of like women in Jungle Drum and Bass, I think my MA thesis, you can skip sections of it, but it's it's an accessible read.

01:09:42.93
Julia Toppin
There's a great article called Where Are the Women in Jungle Drum and Bass that I wrote for Beat Portal which is a more distilled version of of everything.

01:09:47.85
Isobel Anderson
Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.

01:09:52.79
Julia Toppin
Maybe they could start with that actually because then if they wanted to know more then they could branch out to like the my MA thesis is a bit longer you know. um

01:10:00.87
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:10:01.85
Julia Toppin
And then, yeah, I've got a picture and I'm going to start updating it.

01:10:03.37
Isobel Anderson
Oh.

01:10:04.33
Julia Toppin
I'm always on Twitter. All the drum and bass heads are still on Twitter. I refuse to call it the other thing. um But yeah, I acknowledge it's not the greatest space, but I guess for me, I've created my feed very well.

01:10:17.40
Julia Toppin
So I've just it's just full of like music people and drum and bass people and cool women. So.

01:10:22.00
Isobel Anderson
Yeah. Well, great.

01:10:22.97
Julia Toppin
um

01:10:23.26
Isobel Anderson
That's, that's good that there's a couple of places people can come and connect with you and stay in touch with you and keep, keep abreast of what you're doing.

01:10:28.33
Julia Toppin
Hmm.

01:10:30.33
Isobel Anderson
So we will definitely put links to those in the show notes. Um, but thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It has been fascinating to hear about the evolution of jungle, how it fits into all these different genres and the role that women have and are still have playing in the genre today.

01:10:48.83
Julia Toppin
Oh yeah, I'm absolutely delighted. and I'm always looking if anyone makes any jungle and you want me to put it out, just send it over. ah

01:10:56.49
Isobel Anderson
Awesome.

01:10:57.35
Julia Toppin
and

01:10:57.34
Isobel Anderson
And what what is the name of the label that you, because you said it's still active, the label.

01:11:01.89
Julia Toppin
Yeah, yeah, digital 101 recordings.

01:11:02.26
Isobel Anderson
Yeah.

01:11:03.69
Julia Toppin
We've got a band camp.

01:11:05.00
Isobel Anderson
Brilliant.

01:11:05.47
Julia Toppin
And very embarrassingly, that you know, there's there's no women on now. I really, really, really want to release tracks by women.

01:11:12.74
Isobel Anderson
Right.

01:11:14.60
Julia Toppin
And if you are into Jungle Drum and Bass, EQ50, it's just eq50.co.uk, you know, and there's but they have networking events and stuff like that as well.

01:11:25.49
Isobel Anderson
Brilliant. We'll link to all of those in the show notes for sure.

01:11:29.17
Julia Toppin
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been absolutely delight.

01:11:32.10
Isobel Anderson
Oh, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much, Julia.