{"id":87164,"date":"2021-09-14T16:32:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T14:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=87164"},"modified":"2021-09-15T11:46:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T09:46:23","slug":"from-triggerman-to-big-freedia-a-beginners-guide-to-bounce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/from-triggerman-to-big-freedia-a-beginners-guide-to-bounce\/","title":{"rendered":"From Triggerman to Big Freedia: A beginner\u2019s guide to bounce"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recalling the Pride pool party where his reportage of the \u201cQueen of bounce\u201d Big Freedia was shot – photographer Alexey Kim<\/a> remembers: \u201cBig Freedia\u2019s performance was the party starter – Even though the party had been going on for hours before she took the stage!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big Freedia (pronounced Free-duh) is the Beyonc\u00e9 of New Orleans bounce, the homegrown Southern hip-hop referenced by Queen Bey herself on her 2016 album Lemonade<\/em> <\/strong>which features Freedia on <\/em>\u201cFormation.\u201d Bounce is both party and <\/em>political music, but what else is it? And where did it come from?   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story begins in 1986 with otherwise obscure New York rap duo Orville Hall and Phillip Price, known professionally as The Showboys – and their sleeper hit \u201cDrag Rap\u201d (Triggerman)<\/a>.<\/em> Cut for Profile Records the track is constructed from a handful of samples from 50\u2019s TV cop-show Dragnet<\/em>, paired with brash 808 snares and a distinctive ascending and descending keyboard played in a xylophone pattern. It did little commercially and would have remained a novelty in New York (where hip-hop was enjoying it\u2019s first golden age) had it not found its way South (and to this day no one quite knows how this happened) where it blew up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Big Freedia \u00a9Alexey Kim (@sidewalkkilla)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A combination of the xylophone hook (known today as the \u201cTriggerman Bells\u201d) the drum break and the general strut of \u201cDragrap\u201d <\/em>resonated with DJ\u2019s and clubbers in New Orleans where local producers quickly began deconstructing the track and assembling it into something new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the same time the second mother sample for bounce was plucked from DJ Cameron Paul\u2019s 1987 release \u201cBrown Beats\u201d<\/a> – a 808 heavy West Coast disc the from which producers borrowed further elements they combined with \u201cDragrap\u201d to create proto-bounce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samples from these two records therein became (and remain) the paradigm for the whole genre. What would make bounce distinctly New Orleans though was then added, namely call and response chants calling out dance steps, and shout-outs to the city\u2019s various wards, and by 1993 when M.C.Tucker and DJ Irv released \u201cWhere dey at\u201c<\/a> the formula was well and truly mixed with the addition of a liberal amount of cursing and sexualy explicit suggestions as to how one might move to this new music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed the definitive dance for bounce was codified in 1993 by DJ Jubilee on \u201cStop Pause (Do the jubilee all)\u201d<\/a> which features the exhortation “Twerk baby, twerk baby, twerk, twerk, twerk\u201d <\/em>a chorographical direction to hype up the crowd to perform the signature move. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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