Amen break
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Amen break is a brief drum solo performed in 1969 by Gregory Cylvester "G. C." Coleman in the song "Amen, Brother" performed by the 1960s funk and soul outfit The Winstons. The full song is an up-tempo instrumental rendition of Jester Hairston's "Amen," which he wrote for the Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field (1963) and which was subsequently popularized by The Impressions in 1964. The Winstons' version was released as a B-side of the 45 RPM 7-inch vinyl single "Color Him Father" in 1969 on Metromedia (MMS-117), and is currently available on several compilations and on a 12-inch vinyl re-release together with other songs by The Winstons.
It gained fame from the 1980s onwards when four bars (5.2 seconds) sampled from the drum-solo (or imitations thereof) became very widely used as sampled drum loops in breakbeat, hip hop, breakbeat hardcore, hardcore techno and breakcore, jungle and drum and bass (including oldschool jungle and ragga jungle), and digital hardcore music. The Amen Break was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music—"a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures."
Recognition
On 6 March 2011, BBC Radio 1 broadcast an hour-long documentary as part of the Radio 1 Stories series about the Amen break, presented by Kutski. The influence of the Amen Break was also featured in The Economist calling it a "short burst of drumming [that] changed the face of music".
