Breakbeat: dance battles

The popular breakbeat song of the 1920's the Charleston along with the ever growing Jazz and swing bands, breakbeat grew into a well-used technique to create original and uplifting music with the beat being broken allowing the drum loops to occur during the break in the music.

Hip Hop turntablist and DJ Kool Herc, began using several funk breaks in his early mixes of the 1980’s, with several irregular drum patterns from music artists songs such as The Winston’s Amen Brother and James Brown’s song Funky Drummer which formed the hip hop rhythm base for many of his mixes.

With the early 1990’s acid house producers introduced breakbeat samples into their music, which later was referred to as rave music or breakbeat hardcore. Jungle and drum and bass were subgenres of the hardcore music scene focusing more on complex sampled drum patterns. Goldie's album Timeless was a mixture of the original breakbeat technique from the early 1920's to the current trend of the 1990's.

Many DJ's of various genres use breakbeat into their original set; this later became popular within the global dance music scene of that era with big beat, acid breaks, and nu skool breaks mixed and recorded for an unusual but addictive sound of that time.

Krafty Kuts, Dynamix II, Dirty Harry are just a few of the well-known music DJ's around the world that used breakbeat within the music and set. Jungle, hardcore, and Hip Hop songs, are primarily created with breakbeats. Growing ever popular amongst individuals, many TV commercials, radio, and movies used current songs that had been written with breakbeats to enhance and capture their audience.