Alain_Patrick, Aug 27, 2007
A name for a legendary group of native Americans, "Apache" (also known as "Apachie") was first written by a Spanish character named Juan de Oñate in 1598 during his Country's colonization in America on the XVIth Century; hundreds years later it would ironically become a quintessential chapter on the history of dance music.
After all, it couldn’t go unnoticed; these groups of Natives, known as aboriginal inhabitants of North America used to speak a Southern Athabaskan language commonly named Apachean. During the next decennies, their culture would deeply influence America, from the Western movies to of course, the music: in the middle of the XXth Century, the famous TV sery Apache (starring well-known Burt Lancaster) reached large audiences with a highly suggestive soundtrack.
Though the TV sery was American, the band behind the original soundtrack was English: formed in the fifties as The Drifters, this group of talented musicians (featuring Cliff Richard) would change during the next couple of years and rename themselves The Shadows in 1959, this time leaded by the composer Jerry Lordan. This year, they would record the homonym song called "Apache", released few months later, in 1960. The song remained alternative until Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band decided to re-record it with extended breaks with the emphasis on its bongo drums and conga drums (1973), performed by the drummer King Harrison.
The definitive chapter took place some years later, when the the Apache Breaks were cleverly discovered by the Hip Hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc during the Street Parties era. Herc extended the Apache Breaks by playing two copies of it on the contests in the Bronx seventies scene, and the result was not less than a cataclysm: the impact would affect the International dance music scene since then, crossing all the frontiers imaginable, from Music styles to the different generations.
The Apache Breaks figures among the most sampled Breakbeat solos ever: after being adopted by the Godfather of Hip Hop Kool Herc on the seventies, being part of Double Dee & Steinski's collage "The Lessons" (1985) and released on the quintessential compilation sery Ultimate Breaks & Beats (on the volume 3, 1986), the Apachie Breaks became one of the major Breakbeat references.
As a natural consequence, it was sampled by projects from Hip Hop (with probably the highest number of cases, from Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five to Sugarhill Gang, LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, Schoolly D, among others) to Electro (with the amazing "Break Dance Electric Boogie" (1983) by West Street Mob and also on other generations of the genre such as Joey Beltram's Direct on "Let It Ride" (1990)); the list include the most diverse genres and types of music, such as the Breakbeat samplemaniacs Coldcut and seversal House, Hip House, Techno, Breakbeat Rave and even Progressive House artists from the end eighties to the early nineties. Hardcore, Jungle & Drum n' Bass also borrowed the Apache Breaks hundreds and hundreds of times, just like well known Breakbeat lovers (The Future Sound Of London, Moby, Massive Attack, just to mention some).
Despite giving the music itself a very specific mood, the Apache Breaks amazingly renewed itself through the most different musical genres during more than three decades with incredible vitality.
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