There is nothing mediocre about a breakbeat and there is nothing more i'd like to do than to devote a lifetime exploring how a simple beat globalised the masses to dance like none had danced before, then writing about it.
Hiphop being the perfect example. Kool herc and grandmaster flash looped the breaks in records and stretched them out to pioneer turntablism and scratch breaks and inspired sampling technology to form various musical continua. The breaks also inspired a radical new form of dance with the b in b-boy standing for break later to be misnomered as break dancing.
When you link continua, they become a lattice. Northern soul/acid jazz and to a certain extent hiphouse was as much about breakbeats as madchester was also about drugs, all of which preceded hardcore/jungle.
To truly invoke the 'breakbeat' lattice you'd have to isolate it within the context of afrofuturism and ultimately allow for the cross cultural exchange across the black atlantic thru music. Something which trancends the importance of the simple history of UK sound systems and the ardkore nuum. True, you could also invoke a lattice of ‘4 on the floor’ house by way of chicago and detroit but with breakbeats you start with the godfather of soul and the funky drummer as opposed to cybertron and clear. That firmly ensconses the breakbeat within a timeframe of significant change for a black identity.
That line about the beat co opted by white intellectuals deals in an ever so glib fashion with the influence things like JA sound system culture inspired dub in the UK and the genesis of hiphop thru kool herc and possibly forming social movements like widespread rasta beliefs and hiphop as a valid culture.
With that in mind, it seems music as a bridge across the racial and class divide within the broadest geographical spectrum at the lowest level, that of the ghetto never seems to gain creedence until couched in intellectualism by middle class whites. Using jungle, dubstep and grime as examples it appears that it takes a simon reynolds, a logan sama or a kode9 to almost legitimise what is essentially black music whitened up for airplay.
ummm yeah... well beyond conservatism eh and to be honest i'd probably need a ghost writer, which if i could decipher hauntology in any meaningful context relating to breakbeats i'd need, especially to interview james brown.
...and for what its worth there is more i like to do than explore breakbeats and write about em
