I need jungle I'm afraid

Here is a story about how I got into jungle music.

It started in January 2024. University Challenge was back from the Christmas break and Sheffield was up against Aberdeen, who fielded the now-famous question:

“What name is given to the genre of dance music that developed in the UK in the early 1990s out of the rave scene and reggae soundsystem culture, associated with acts such as A Guy Called Gerald and Goldie?”

Aberdeen pauses. The captain looks back and forth. She guesses: “Drum & bass?”

Amol Rajan, without looking up: “I can’t accept drum & bass; we need jungle, I’m afraid.”

(As a side note slash brag: I did actually get that one at the time.)

Anyway, the internet went wild with jungle remixes of Rajan saying, “we need jungle, I’m afraid”, e.g:

These remixes sounded vaguely familiar to me. Other than an experimental stab at Venetian Snares in uni, I’ve never been particularly into drum & bass.

What was resonating with me?

The answer emerged only months later, when I found Klang’s Ethnography of Jungle and DnB in 90s/00s Video Games. A subset of very Japanese early-3d video games on the Nintendo 64 (and Playstation, but we didn’t have one of those) soundtracked my childhood. I’ll never forget the fake strings of Super Mario 64’s “Castle Theme”, nor the tinkling beads of Ocarina of Time’s torches, nor, it turns out, the hyperspeed snares of Bomberman Hero’s “redial”.

The Ethnography sent me down a rabbit hole of old video games we rented from Blockbuster once or twice but whose soundtracks have stuck with me, like Wave Racer 64 or F1 Pole Position or the better parts of Phantom Crash:

In due time, YouTube noticed that I was listening to a bunch of jungle music all of a sudden and spun up its Charles has a new obsession algorithm and started serving me all sorts of jungle-adjacent Content, including this live drum cover of “redial” from Bomberman Hero:

And, to bring us full circle, this drum cover of Venjent’s original “we need jungle I’m afraid”:

So am I into jungle music? I think maybe I’m more into being 9 years old in the final years of the 20th century. But that wouldn’t have been a very good opening line.