BAM BAM is the new breed in Sugarfactory. The solid mix of dancehall-reggae and dubstep /drum&bass has got that sweet and dirty 2012 flavor written all over her.Every first Friday of the month we love to get nasty. The story of Bam Bam and Miss Suga goes way back into time, deep into the trenches of Amsterdam nightlife.
The early days
We were young and the party could be anywhere, even the most dubious of student places had its shine, on off days it was the place to hang out and feel fine. Sunday was one of them and this is where Miss Suga popped op, dancing in the light from star to star. Express yourself was blasting out of the small hissy speakers, close enough to the dj booth to literally feel the proximity of the dancefloor. I was sharing the decks with Carlito the flying Buddhist and his preferred brand of masters working and soulful US Garage. Carlito had that special quality to make records disappear during his set and one time he got locked in the cinema, taking his meditation so deep that everyone had forgotten about him. Wherever the flying Buddhist showed up, Miss Suga was dancing about. Little that I knew of the Sugar story that would be unfolding.
Amsterdam, the city we love when the lights go out, the Friday nights used to be a full on battle ground. The students wanted house, the high school kids liked hip-hop, Mr. Wix was one of them, usually coming out for his Black Sheep request. We loved it all, Black Sheep, Tribe, Gangstarr, Public Enemy and by the time we got into N.W.A the bells started ringing. The red haired giant in charge used to climb over piled up student bodies in this jam packed small club, yelling at me from afar, ‘Fighting at the bar, quit the fuckkkin hip-hop’. So we put on some Fresh Fruit house to bring back the peace. There was something highly explosive about this mixture of hip-hop and house in 1992/3 but somehow the time wasn’t ready yet.
Milkyway, my first and favorite resident club had kicked me out for giving in too much into this mix. They were still quite rock minded and use to tape my sets, mainly to check if enough rock was being played. There was still only the old room and the Milkyway Saturday night Dance Arena had this total chaos magic (hip-hop reggae funk punk house rave inde rock salsa crazyness). Even now, twenty years later, I still think the early nineties Milkyway was an amazing eclectic deejay’s paradise. I remember closing off with a Rai ballad, inde psychedelica, rare groove or some new house/breakbeat tune. Anything was possible, if you played it right. The biggest two anthems we played week in week out were the Pharcyde’s ‘Passin me by’ and Sister Nancy’s ‘Bam Bam’. I found out that I would get away with a minimum of about 10/12 rock songs a night, as a deejay I felt rock had dried out after the Manchester high and the Pixies goodbye. The tension between rock,hip-hop and house/rave was real though, it was the archetypical Prodigy energy that was breeding.
It was in 1994 that I realized this new genre of breakbeat or jungle as they called it actually managed to bridge the gap between hip-hop and house, with some reggae thrown in for good measure. No-one did Jungle in Amsterdam yet, but the only place I could pull it off was the dead end street of cool, Dansen bij Jansen again. So I did eventually turn the Sunday into Jungle and managed to perhaps getting 30 people in at the max, though usually clocking in around 10/15 visitors. The bar crew decided to help out and printed up some posters. Early one Saturday morning I stumbled out of the Milkyway and bumped into my own name as ‘King of the Jungle’ and felt so embarrassed that I personally had to scratch off all the posters I could find. It was not until about a year later, middle to late 1995, that Jungle blew up, both in the underground warehouse parties as well as in the Milkyway. Meanwhile we had formed the first Jungle Alliance in Amsterdam as Jungle Tribe, together with Jungle J. and mc Marxman. The time had arrived to seriously spread the virus.
Jungle Paradise
In the Amsterdam of the 1990s there was still enough chaos in the city, unlike the 2010s where every square meter is sort of mapped out. One of the most amazing buildings was Vrieshuis America (Freeze house) on the eastern harbor side, which was squatted by a friend Mark Shaban somewhere in 1994. The building was 5 stories high, every floor at least the size of a soccer field, an industrial paradise for parties and artists. It was great for the no closing time parties and as the place was huge we eventually managed to put up a festival there. Shaban was on decoration, Bobby did the programming and we had some friends to take care of money, permission and all of that. As we wanted the Prodigy as main act, there was a gamble involved as, of course, we didn’t have their fee of 60.000 guilders. We told them we had the money as we told the sponsor we had the Prodigy and somehow started the promotion hoping that the squatting Gods were with us.
As Shaban had recruited some cranes to fix up his decoration, pimped up car-wrecks, we all got kinda nervous when he started to staple the car-wrecks right in front of the main stage. As Art came first, it was only the fire brigade that made Shaban change his mind and move the car-wrecks to the side of the festival place. Still they played a vital role in the art of the party. After Afrika Islam the vibe was getting seriously out there. Tupac had died the week before and Afrika Islam took the mic ‘Dedicating this one to Tupac, who found out how real hip-hop was’, putting on Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’. The next amazing moment was when Roni Size & Krust were rocking the full crowd whilst Shaban’s car-wrecks went on fire. He had put stroboscopes inside, which somehow had caught fire and soon there was a 15 meter high fire blazing and 2500 people rocking to jungle, thinking it was part of the party. Until the fire brigade showed up , put it out and as the Prodigy came on ,it started to rain during ‘Firestarter’, it was obvious that something special had occurred.
In the Freeze House aftermath I met Miss Suga again, as we were in the think-tank for getting a successive space, which eventually became de Zwijger (The Silent One, after William the Silent). We had weekly meetings in which the mind was allowed to flow free. This is where Miss Suga and Bobby connected and came up with a concept of a specific operating system (OS), designed for a futuristic yet highly humanist oriented club experience. As we were working on this mindset for like a year, it became clear that Apollonian forces had taken control of the destiny of de Zwijger and our ideas were to be postponed for some other 2010s reality. Well Miss Suga, I think there is a chapter to finish in 2012 and beyond.
In the meantime Jungle/drum&bass had blown up beyond proportion and injected the city’s nightlife with a freshness that was completely hers. Looking back now the years between 1996 and 1999 were amazing in terms of its energy and pace: every week a couple of crazy parties. Somehow the nice drum&bass parties would always catch at least 400 ready to go,up for it, positive party peeps. There was something about drum&bass that really suited Amsterdam of the 1990s. Highly energetic, slightly alternative, culturally mixed and ready to rumble. The big difference with dubstep is not only the faster pace, but also the optimism that 1996/99 drum&bass managed to capture so well in Amsterdam. Thats why in BAM BAM we put the drum&bass and reggae alongside the dubstep, not only to give it roots, but also to hold on to the source of the bass positivity.
There was a striking difference with the current dubstep scene, which, of course, is the late born son of drum’n’bass. Mala (of Digital Mystikz) said it clearly referring for his inspiration towards 1995 jungle, when it was so fresh and open that the sound basically could go anywhere. Dubstep is going now through a similar development as drum&bass went through. As the freshness of the creative beginning dozes off, the stadium noise vacuum cleaner massive takes over and dubstep has a fair chance of falling into oblivion as well, just like its father did in the early 2000s. If we can believe some of the inventors of jungle/breakbeat, PJ & SMILEY (of SHUT UP and DANCE), what they tried to do was to capture the spirit of 1980s dancehall in a digital, sampled way. So in this sense the circle is round again.
Rewind to those crazy 1990s, as the SABOTAGE SOUND SURFERS (Chaos&Ldopa) we spread the jungle fever all over the city. Paradiso, Roxy and Milkyway especially. Milkyway managed to incorporate drum&bass in their in-house Dance Arena Saturday night and with the most blasting sound system in the city, the ‘old’ Max, Milkyway ruled the drum&bass explosion. Paradiso had the best monthly with DRUM&BASSLINE, where the raw sexiness of bass sounds came out so well, whilst upstairs KC the Funkaholic started out his Kindred Spirits venture. Roxy made it weekly with ‘FLOW’, the most beautiful club allowed drum&bass to become intimate. As Roxy was struggling with its post-house identity crises, the FLOW club night that we did there became a story in and of itself. The story of the demise of drum&bass in the Roxy turned out to be a metaphor for a change of Zeitgeist. The mistake that the Roxy made was to go off at the style and character of the drum&bass audience (‘too much sneakers’,’ too Milkyway’). As they eventually blamed the dj’s, they kicked us, Chaos&LDopa, out, after which the night slowly died. The year after the Roxy burned down at the funeral of Peter Giele , one of its founders. Ironically his artist motto was ‘Ab igne ignem capere’, the one fire lights up the other. As SABOTAGE associate Firefly was organizing the funeral inside, the spread out fireworks eventually somehow closed off the chapter of what we can now refer to as ‘the free 90’s’.
The Millennium bugging out
Of course Miss Suga was a Roxy girl.Most of those who witnessed the magic of Roxy in the first half of her existence spend the rest of their lives chasing that spell around. As the Roxy nostalgians left for Chemistry, we retreated into the safe havens of Paradiso & Milkyway, where the Saturdaynight Dance Arena was still burning hot, though it slowly started to lose out on drum&bass. From 1999 on we witnessed the slow takeover of the multicultural urbanite Amsterdam, which put hip-hop back on top. In 2000 SABOTAGE & CHOCOLATE (Mr.Wix) joined forces to do a one off called KNOCKOUT. Hip-hop meets drum&bass became an instant success and KNOCKOUT got a life of its own. Soon hip-hop came to dominate the city and as drum&bass was forced into the small room and losing its touch with the times, it was in 2001 that we first tried dancehall-reggae in KNOCKOUT, which eventually took over both drum&bass and hip-hop.
Because of its open door policy the Milkyway Dance Arena was the best indication of what was happening in the city. Something was going on… Well yes, the Moroccan Amsterdamians had arrived, from just a few to well into the serious numbers. Bobby was like ‘Welcome guys, here’s an R.Kelly and a Cheb Khaled for u, join in, everyone’s welcome, we hippies, well gangster hippies but still somehow behave..’. The security situation got tense for a while with guys circling in girls and too much lil wannabe Dr.Dre’s in the Max. It wasn’t all that easy but after six months and the joined efforts of some fathers, uncles and tuned up security forces, the situation was reasonably under control. Alternative urban allocation management secured. But then out of the blue 9-11 flashed in and changed the whole game.
Perhaps 9-11 was the definite departure of those slightly naive, yet kinda happy and uplifting 1990’s. Since we already had the Moroccan kids inside and an Osama lookalike (dj 360) behind the decks, the alternative establishment roared its head and got some kind of nervous, just like the Milkway regulars queuing up outside, suddenly fearing the ‘urban’ crowd .The return of the mono-culture was immanent and consequently the Chaos had to be controlled as Bobby got sacked for the second time from his favorite club. Sometimes the signs of the times translate more direct through music (or other art) than through society itself.
Soon after Miss Suga showed up again. She planned a move out of the city center and took me into her Heart & Art venture in this kinda slick Panama venue, which seemed very karma like to me, as Panama was build next to the dismantled Freeze House, on the IJ river shore, which was full of free party memories. Panama was a 2000s venue, a little uptight though it had some style as well, which Miss Suga managed to bring out quite nice, putting former Roxy kid Kareem Raihani in the main house room. We hosted the other side, the restaurant as ‘The Shack’, an intimate take on hip-hop, reggae, soul and disco eclectic, which turned the ‘Heart’ night into a clubbing experience with a social surplus. In some way it was more mature than the jump-up nights that drum&bass and hip-hop had brought along.
One of the nice things of this more intimate club atmosphere was the space it created. There was more space for intimacy and sweetness as well as for the dj student rookie teenager. I have always supported the idea to introduce, support or guide upcoming dj’s, especially if you host a weekly club night. Each one, teach one. I got the chance to play Milkyway at the age of 19, which I am still very grateful for. My brother and me carrying crates into Sunday morning busses that never arrive wasn’t all that glorious, but hey, you’re playing Saturday Millkyway. Quite a few rookie masters passed in a decade of damn clubs. DJ’s like Ldopa, Arnold, Bamba Nazar, Job de Wit, Olly de Jeu, Missing Link and Lee Millah but the kid who showed up in Panama was a lil different: slow, stubborn, quietly clever and with a joy of life that hijacked the b-boy classic ‘I am only 19 but my mind is older..’
While Miss Suga was running around to get the heart of the club ready for some organic soul exchange, we were getting cosy in the restaurant. The dj kid became a serious student, he even moved into my house with his MPC and big dj/producer dreams. Although initially reluctant to reggae,rock & house, the shine of this boy was unmistakable. Since the exchange also included intellectual and spiritual ideas, the role of being the elder one, the teacher, was quite a new experience. The main problem was that he used to clear the dancefloor with hip-hop, time after time. After a couple of months I was like ‘You cant put on another Gangstarr or J-Dilla, after you just cleared the floor with hip-hop.’ Though the pace was slow, it was all in the name, for it was Trago. The diesel force of Tom Trago eventually got the groove going.Though he developed in a complete different direction, I hear from the other side of the city that he’s doing quite ok these days.
The heart/soul experience was not bound to last in Panama, the whole building was an advance take on the yuppified islandic Amsterdam that was emerging. After the Shack and more than a decade of full on weekend dj work it was time for the serious side of life to feed itself. Bobby went back into the realms of Nietzsche, Sufism, Physics and poetica, in the riddim of regular life, taking a serious deejay ramadan for a couple of years.
Out of Africa
Eventually it was Africa that pulled me out of the dj ramadan. Staying on a local beach in Ghana, around Xmas party time, was an eye-opening experience. A beach full of raving Africans to uptempo Coupé decalé and locally produced house music reinforced my belief in the house music experience. Being the odd European boy out there, with at least ten people looking at white-boys’ ass all the time, to witness if he can actually shake it, means either do or die, flee or completely give in to the dancing madness. Early 2007 I came out of the ramadan with a mission of pushing or playing African house music and of course Miss Suga was waiting for me. She even managed a Factory to get things going by then.
During my dj ramadan the KNOCKOUT monthly at the Milkyway had been steadily going and gone through the dancehall-reggae take over. In 2004 Mr.Wix had left for Paradiso as the hip-hop in KNOCKOUT had lost its force,mainly because Bitterzoet, Appelsap and other nights started to adapt the same classic and design oriented hip-hop formula. As the remaining attraction Dancehall-Reggae was fresh and cutting edge in 2004/5. In 2005 dj Waxfiend jumped out of the KNOCKOUT-crew to start his JAMROCK. With its immaculate timing JAMROCK blew up way bigger than KNOCKOUT, it was the time that the identity of dancehall-reggae merged with the need for a subculture by the Caribbean rooted Amsterdamians, even across the country. Consequently KNOCKOUT became more reggae, as JAMROCK turned dancehall into a nation wide raving (teenage) madness.
As Bobby returned from Africa and wanted to do African house, the reference club sound he used was dancehall-reggae. In early 2007 we did a KNOCKOUT carnival in Sugar Factory, which eventually turned into AFRODISIA, African house, dancehall and some in between beats, music that these days is referred to as ‘tropical bass’. The African house chapter was another story, perhaps too early again, though the potential for a multi-cultural and spiritual yoga-fied house erotica is now on the 2010’s agenda. Over the last five years the South African house has largely developed into deep house which makes the cross-over to tropical bass/dancehall more elusive. I still think the GLOBAL SOUTH musical takeover will take hold eventually, but perhaps it takes a few more years of musical development. It needs more producers from Africa and South America to stand up and be counted.
In the 21st century the connection to some kind of ‘nomadic consciousness’ seems to have become an essential trait for the development of the new generation deejay. In the old skool days of vinyls and flyers we had to travel to find fresh vinyl shops and be digging in some other crates. This is a fundamental difference with the Beatport-Traktor reality of 2012. On the deejay level I would say that the development of a nomadic consciousness needs a physical component to be triggered. The vinyl shop didn’t only have black plastic magic but real life people as well, unlike the software that runs our day2day now. It’s nice to be chatting on new tunes but unless the magic of the music is triggered by some dance around the corner, the social media ‘revolution’ does not generate anything new. It just reinforces the isolation of modern urban life, that is, unless the music revolution starts to take care of itself and makes social life richer in stead of poorer. Perhaps that is the challenge we face, and it could be the earthy reason why reggae makes sense all around the world too.
Playing in Germany, Israel or Switzerland made me realize how specific the Amsterdam scene is, especially the reggae scene, which tends to develop in a very different way when there is no specific Caribbean crowd in town. It actually makes the versatility of reggae much greater but it loses out on intensity. An Amsterdam crowd that goes crazy on reggae dancehall is quite an incredible phenomena, which is sometimes hard to trigger, but worth every penny of trying. But to open up an Amsterdam reggae crowd is much harder, the breakdown force has always been more on the side of hip-hop, but of course this music style has marketed itself pretty much to a state of irrelevancy in the 2010s, though its power has been hybridized by a multitude of cultural forces.
When we started out BAM BAM in the late summer of 2011, there was a general feeling that the cycle of dubstep drum&bass and reggae had gone 360 again. Dubstep started to include drum&bass as father, brother, peer or fellow traveller. Dancehall-reggae seemed to be in decline ever since BUJU got lost in the coke maze. Within both Dubstep and Drum&bass reggae-dancehall was getting stronger, so it was time for a new breed. There is an Amsterdam trait that is really good in opening up borders and stretching the mark to make new cross-overs possible and play with the relation between identity and music. Many of the hip local dj’s of the last decade have changed their style or at least part of their style, like for example Mr. Wix, Cinnaman, Rednose, Waxfiend, Flexican, Tom Trago or Lee Millah. Internationally its seems to pay off to stick to one style, but the local Amsterdam style works out really well across the spectrum. Ever since Diplo came on the world stage, I suppose it has become credible to be a little off the hook or style inventing as long as there is a cutting edge to it. Hide your roots and embrace the world.
Of course BAM BAM is not shy about her roots, its reggae music and the dance of Mother earth. Still, as the world needs a new dance, BAM BAM does support, even celebrate the idea of the Babylon comedown although it could be a BAM BAM for everyone, let’s just make it a nice one. All hail the Midnight Ravers.
Bobby Chaos 