Incredible Bongo Band
The Incredible Bongo band (also: Michael Viner 's Incredible Bongo Band) was an American instrumental funk band in the early 1970s.
Band History
The Incredible Bongo band was a project that was created in 1972 by Metro -Goldwyn -Mayer producer and musician Michael Viner and his friend Perry Botkin Jr. and composers into life, than for a chase scene in the movie The Thing with Two Heads suitable music was needed. For the film, the songs Bongo Rock Bongolia were recorded and released on the soundtrack. Because of their popularity, a publication was followed as a 7- inch single, which in turn sold so well that an album titled Bongo rock followed in 1973. The album was recorded in a few days in Vancouver with a solid cast of musicians whose composition is not more survived. Sure there were the drummer Jim Gordon and the conga player King Errisson. The LP sold worse than by the good sales of the single was expected.
Nevertheless, Michael Viner used free studio time to record another album, which was published in 1974 under the name Return of the Incredible Bongo band. During the recording of this album alongside Michael Viner always played different musicians who were just in the studio and had the time and desire to participate in the project. Here, too, are no longer provides all the contributors. What is known yet that Jim Gordon and King Errisson and Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Bobbye Hall, Hal Blaine, Glen Campbell, Don Coster and Harry Nilsson were involved. Partly were up to two hours, as Michael Viner calls them, "drum wars" was added, whose best parts were cut into song - standard lengths. After this album, the project was not pursued further.
Style
Can be described as funky, heavily percussive instrumental music with African and Latin American influences, the style of the Incredible Bongo band.
Reception
The music historical relevance of the Incredible Bongo band manifested itself only after their playing days, when in 1975 the New York DJ and hip- hop pioneer Kool Herc began expanding percussive song parts, in which he piles up two identical plates in parallel and thus the so-called breaks through repetitions with seamless transitions to extended breakbeats. The first song he used to Bongo rock was, the others followed. In particular, the version of the Incredible Bongo Band of Apache song became a favorite. These songs were known as "original breakbeats " and also used by other hip hop pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash. In particular, Apache won in the early hip -hop scene such importance that Kool Herc later designated as the national anthem of hip hop. As a result, pieces of the Incredible Bongo band have been widely used as a basis for break beats and samples in hip hop, jungle and drum and bass genre. As an early example is the Apache Sugar Hill Gang called.