What do you think of when you hear the term “Ragga Jungle” ? It might be reminding you of the famous Dancehall compilation Ragga Ragga Ragga, and if you’ve ever listened to electronic music, the word Jungle might be reminiscent of your old raver days. Mix those two memories together and you’re not far off. Ragga Jungle is a style of electronic music, first developed in the way back when days of the early 90′s, deriving from Hardcore and Jungle, mixed with Reggae vocals and sound effects due to the large jamaican population in London at the time who entered the underground rave scene and joined the ranks of its MC’s and producers to create this unique sound featuring a roaring baseline, intricate drums (called the “amen break”) and reggae / dancehall vocalists singing and chatting over it. After it was almost driven to extinction towards the end of the decade it made a comeback in the early 2000′s with a new wave of young and enthusiastic (mostly) North American producers reviving the sound as New School Ragga Jungle, on average about 20 bpm’s faster than the old school version and featuring samples and voicings from often famous reggae talent. By 2010 this sound has grown into a new full blown movement with producers from around the globe steadily cranking out heavy tunes and it has even broken up into a few sub genres such as “Dubwize”, also called “Rub-a-Dub” (like the style of reggae with the same name), which are chilled out drum n’ bass beats mixed with the sounds of dub and highly melodic (often classic or roots) reggae vocals, as well as “Ragga Dnb”, which is made up of mostly dancefloor driven 180bpm tunes with rougher dancehall or newer reggae hits remixes placed on top. Those latter two are the trademark sounds of Amadeus, hailing from Brooklyn, NYC, member of the worldwide Touch Crew and the tag team King City Rockaz alongside DJ I-Cue (Liquid Sky, Ingenious Music, Konkrete Jungle).
Originally from Berlin (Germany), he started DJ’ing in 1998 and rose up playing clubs and raves all over Colorado during his college days. His second mix CD “Midsummer Night Sessions” (2001) was praised by BPM Magazine as “The music is sooo fine! Drum and Bass bliss. Props for not being the typical band wagon monkey. If this guy is in your neighborhood give him some props!” (February 2001 issue), and garnered him runner-up (out of over a thousand submissions) in the North-American DJ contest :”Unleash the Beats”. Currently living in Brooklyn, he performs throughout the US, Canada and Europe, where he completed five annual tours, which took him to Germany, Belgium, France, Romania, Holland and the Czech Republic. Not only active behind the decks he hosted the monthly “King City Sundays” (also called “Plan B Dnb Sundays”) from 2006-2009 in Manhattan and was the mind behind “Survival Story – The Ragga Jungle Compilation” (2007), a double CD of previously unreleased Ragga Jungle tunes from producers worldwide, which became a runaway success. It had a massive impact on the scene, and put a lot of Ragga Jungle producers, still very active today, on the ragga jungle map.
His mixes are the single most praised part of his career, having brought in countless people to the sounds of ragga dnb / jungle due to their careful selection of tunes and highly precise mixing, traveling the globe via internet and getting very high numbers of downloads. His mix “Bridge Over Babylon” (2008) had over 50,000 downloads, and his mix in the famous Drum N’ Bass series “B2B Sessions” series, hosted by west coast MC XYZ, has had more downloads than any of the other previous editions, at least the ones trackable online. Unwilling to curb to the pressure of adopting other rising genres such as Dubstep, which is cutting down the ranks of DNB DJ’s, Amadeus has stayed the course, and is now also honing his productions skills (his latest tune “Realise”, a licensed remix of UK Reggae Artist Parly B has won the November 2009 Raggajungle.biz monthly producer showcase, representing Amadeus’ first entry ever) and is aiming to release an EP of his tunes later in 2010.
Known for highly energetic performances, Amadeus blends anything from drubwize to ragga dnb rollers to ragga-jungle. Always comin’ correct with loads of unreleased dubplates from international producers his unique sound is defined by versatility and crowd interaction, always inciting great respect and overall dancehall madness.
