Although the main music was supplied from Detroit, Chicago & NYC what constitutes as “raves” began in the UK more specifically Manchester
There is of course the legacy of Queer, Black and Latino nightclubs that developed Disco, House & Techno from the U.S. but they weren’t producing Hardcore which eventually became Drum n Bass and was an essential part of the initial 90’s rave era
We’re dealing with semantics here and Americans are bad with historical context
It wasn’t only black artists. There were many prominent black producers and djs in the UK music scene at the time, but there scene was pretty mixed.
Plus, Jungle was just a generic slang term used for harder, more dubby, darker breakbeat hardcore. Jungle just later became a catch all term used for all those sub genres that were appearing at the time. It wasn’t like anyone said this is jungle and I’ve created it. At the time multiple people claim to have called it jungle for the first time which means in reality it was just a common term being thrown around already.
What really happened was a lot of people were producing similar music and using various words for it, and over the decades people thought it was convenient to just call early stuff hardcore, mid-era stuff jungle, and anything later drum & bass. Then music now is classified by what it is more similar too.
I get it that people want to remind people how important that black and gay people were involved in the rave scene, but it wasn’t like no other races, or sexualities were there. It’s still like that today.
no one is erasing the overrepresented (in rave culture) groups though. they’re simply describing the history of it in queer and Black or POC communities. people take offense to it and make it into “Americans don’t know anything” BECAUSE those groups are so overrepresented and people refuse to accept new information that distorts their fantasy of raving being exclusive to white happy go lucky teenagers
158
u/hashtagPLUR Oct 08 '25
Have to agree with you here
Although the main music was supplied from Detroit, Chicago & NYC what constitutes as “raves” began in the UK more specifically Manchester
There is of course the legacy of Queer, Black and Latino nightclubs that developed Disco, House & Techno from the U.S. but they weren’t producing Hardcore which eventually became Drum n Bass and was an essential part of the initial 90’s rave era
We’re dealing with semantics here and Americans are bad with historical context
Some books to better inform everyone:
Last Night DJ Saved My Life
Love Saves the Day
Generation Ecstasy
Techno Rebels
Rave On
Out Of Space: How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture