Musical Space 8/23: Amen Break

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This week on Musical Space Mark Foley discusses a most ubiquitous presence, the amen break.

Here’s a product of digital technology which has become a part of our musical landscape: The amen break. The amen break is a break beat. That is, a segment of a recorded drum solo manipulated and looped by a digital program called a sampler. This one is taken from a B-side instrumental gospel-funk tune, “Amen, Brother” by The Winstons, recorded in 1969. Here’s the drum solo:

(“Amen, Brother”)

This five-second solo could be the most quoted segment in all of pop music; it has become the basis for literally thousands of tunes.

Hip-hop pioneers NWA used the amen break in the tune “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988. The break is slowed down to match the rhythm of the rap:

(“Straight Outta Compton”)

By the ‘90s the amen break was everywhere, and this is what really interests me: musicians had to keep coming up with fresh ways of using it. Jungle and drum and bass use sped-up break beats, as in the theme to the children’s cartoon The Powerpuff Girls. Listen to how fast the amen break is going.

(The Powerpuff Girls theme)

So, why is the amen break so popular? Probably because of its retro-vinyl sound and deep, deep, funkiness, but more than that, could be used to reference layers of music history and culture in a song: for, say, a rap group to quote the amen break is to invoke an older funk tune which itself refers to a yet older gospel standard.