Break, that is. The beat that spawned a thousand (or a million) breaks was played first by Gregory Cylvester Coleman of The Winstons, a drum solo in a B side of theirs called "Amen Brother", which was itself a re-imagining of Jester Hairston's gospel classic "Amen". I was messing with the beat today, that most seminal of the most seminal; it's so ubiquitous that it felt kind of weird to be working with it.
I went for a nosey online about it; there's a rich seam to be mined on dinternetz, a testament to its cult status. Obviously a whole raft of "the definitive online amen break archive", but other stuff as well. Articles and blog posts and the like.
So, this (post) is just some links. No point in doing an Amen break on it.
This audio documentary from 2004 is by Nate Harrison. It's recorded on a dub-plate, in fact - some snippets of music (too bleedin short though!), interesting observations on the nature of copyright and the rest of...all that kinda stuff. Yaknow. Give er a listen, it's only twenty minutes long.
A piece on its relation to (as in, embodiment of) The Golden Ratio, an article from The Economist (more music focused, jungle in particular), and more musicks from Ethan Hain's blog.
This piece from The Huffington Post is more on the copyright tip. I do love me ruminations on copyright! Interesting though; it covers a lot of the points made in Harrison's documentary, as well as Thomas Edison's attempt to monopolise the fledgling motion picture industry by waging a war of petty lawsuits. Plus ça change, eh.
For more of a meditative buzz, try knitting an Amen break scarf. Takes all sorts.
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