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Jungle music is one of the most radical and punkish forms of electronic music, employing fast tempos (140-165 BPM is common) and placing extended and mangled breakbeats on top of throbbing, dominant basslines originally borrowed from reggae. Jungle borrows samples and styles from almost all types of music, assimilating them and bringing them into a completely different context.

Pure jungle often uses an MC's rasta vocals and rapping, but "jungle" is sometimes used as a blanket term for drum and bass, jump up, dancehall, techstep, drill and bass, ambient DnB and many other breakbeat subgenres, all with different sounds and aesthetics. Drum'n'bass tends to be darker, while jump-up and dancehall are intended for dance clubs.

Jungle beats, originally cut from hip hop and funk records of the 1970s and 1980s, were made possible by adavances in musical technology. As jungle began to emerge many loop samplers would not allow beats faster than 150 BPM, but as technology became more powerful artists made beats specifically for jungle, often out of beats sampled from old records. Drum machines were also employed when their design allowed.

One of the original jungle breaks, a classic that remains the most used breakbeat in history, is the amen break, from a funk song called "Amen Brother" by The Winstons. The energy and intensity of this particular breakbeat is regarded by many as a definitive example of the jungle sound.

See also

• List of jungle and drum'n'bass artists

• Breakbeat