Tribal House

Do you consider tribal house, by definition, to be an extension of regular house music, or progressive according to beat structure, and tribal by the actual sound?

Obviously its all 'House' music, but to articulate my question, is it closer to normal house or progressive house?

Define "normal house" - to me, that's the likes of Derrick Carter, Mateo and Matos, DJ Dan...the boompty, bouncey, east or west coast, organic, funky, soulful shit. As such, I liken tribal much more to progressive than "house"

Normal house - just 4x4 ministry of sound, probably vocal, churned out shit.

Regular house Ask three people what that is, one from New York, one from Chicago and one from Paris. All would come back with a different answer.

Basically - Tribal house is house (holy shit!) with ethnic rhythm elements and sometimes vocals/instruments. It is not a flow-on from progressive house. Most classic prog has more in common with trance than it does with tribal.

Tribal house in earnest really started in the early 90s - before modern 'prog'. The key track, or point in time, for tribal house was River Ocean's "Love and Happiness". This tune is also regarded by many non-tribal fans as one of the greatest house tracks of the modern era because it had such a great idea, amazing song-writing/singing and flawless execution. (They even made the same song with an English and a Spanish version)

Once prog became a sound unto itself in the mid-late 90s another weird thing happened. In Europe progressive mean more trancy slanted, epic house-based music. In the US progressive mean the more tribally New York sound styles played by Tengalia, Calderone, DJ Vibe, Angel Moraes etc. Perhaps they refer to it more as a prog style of DJing.

This difference is one of the reasons why prog got such a shit name in NZ and I didn't really like to refer to what I played as 'prog'. A couple of local promoters/DJs did gigs playing utter cheese trancey rave shit house and called it 'prog' - ruining any hint of credibility it might have had.

But, tribal got hijacked too - by the spanish tribal crew who made their massive big-room wall-of-drums tunes which had little other musical elements to it. People started to say "this is boring shit" because a lot of it was. I still talk to people who consider Chus & Ceballos to be the tribal sound - yet I might have three tunes by them - all over five years old.

Tribal music always seems to have it's place. Carl Cox plays tribal, Jon Digweed plays it, Derrick May plays it, Tengalia def plays it. But all different versions of it. I think it's because 'tribal' elements are a great way to give music a real rhythmic energy which it wouldn't otherwise have for the BPM range. Some tribal tunes are masterpieces of house in general, not just as tribal.

Off the top of my head some excellent tribal tunes, old and new, which non-tribal guys thrashed all over the world:

Cuba Computers - Haunting Me (Chus & Ceballos mix)
Quicksound - Stop Fooling Around (anything by Quicksound)
Deep Dish pres Elastic Reality - Cassa De X
Most stuff by Kult Of Krameria or on Ready Mix Records.

R

MAW is normal house. MOS compilations are mostly commercial party house.

Or do you mean normal as in "most common" and not as in "the base version" of house?

R

Yeah, most common I was getting at.
Cheers for the above. Most informative. Although I may have lost an argument. Me and a mate were arguing about this the other day. I was arguing that -in structure- tribal is more like prog, and it would be valid to say that much tribal house is a structured progressively, with a tribal instruments to create the rhythmic sound.

Lemmie see...Tribal instruments creating rhythmic sounds...

A drum perhaps? Any drum.

By structured do you mean how it is made : the technical elements etc., or do you mean the arrangement : how long the intro is, the middle section, breakdown etc are? I doubt it takes any more/less inspiration from progressive house than it does from garage.

Tribal really became popular as a sound because of the label Tribal America (www.myspace.com/tribalamerica) - many tunes on there weren't really that tribal.

It's less formulaic than many other styles due in part to different countries having very different ideas on what a tribal rhythm is (compare Puerto Rico to Africa or India - totally different ethnic sounds) Masters At Work - tons of their music could be called tribal house but I can't recall anyone labeling them as that. Ditto for Valentino Kanzyani who is at the other end of the spectrum.

R

i still have three Tribal House Comps on my ipod (and will always):

Steve Lawler: Ministy Presents: Tribal House
Steve Lawler: Dark Drums 1
Steve Lawler: Dark Drums 2

never, ever, got sick of these mixes, so much deep dark rhythm.

I liked the Dark Drums comps at the time.. but, if you really wanna know what the Tribal vibe is about in amazing fashion you've gotta check out these oldies.

Can Your Pussy Do the Dog - Danny Tenaglia, a truly amazing CD.
http://www.discogs.com/release/368637

The Sound Of Tribal UK - Junior Vasquez
http://www.discogs.com/release/125691

(or the first part of my Live In Singapore mix on twisted.co.nz )

R

It was that bit of tribal that got hijacked by the Spanish and ended up with big conga drums, tabla beats and uber-deep basslines everywhere that really got me into proggressive house. Then people like Eric Entrena and RPO started over doing it by making a bazillion tracks that sounded the same. So I moved on.

I'm yet to hear a Spanish tribal tune with tabla in it and very few have congas in them either.

Some releases on Slanted Black Recs are totally wicked if you like a real East-Coast US sound. Twisted Records is also on fine form again - still a pioneering label in forward-thinking dance music after all these years.

R

Some awesome/timeless tribal tunes:

Stop Fooling Around
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF124418-01-01-01.mp3

Love and Happiness
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF1262087-02-01-05.mp3

R

meh, maybe I'm using the wrong word for them.....it's the basically that short drum roll in the Stop Fooling Around sample. Plenty of releases on Beat Freak Recordings (Spain) and their sub-labels used those same drums quite sparingly.

Most stuff that comes out on stereo productions and its sub-labels are generally what I'd deem tribal house. I personally like tribal stuff, but it does tend to get a bit same same with the drum overload. Good to chuck the odd one in there.
Use to like alot of the zimbardo stuff too, that was what I considered tribal/progressive.

Yeah.. Have you listened to the full version of that track? Quicksound are an enthnic group from Montreal. Most of their time is spent on Cirque Du Soleil productions. All of their drumming is original - no loops, no samples - ever. That is part of the appeal. As a live act they're amazing apparently.

The Iberican/Stereo Spain is notorious for using common tom-loops. Toms are probably the most common drum sounds used.

FYI: congas, tabla, bongos and toms are completely different sounds and used in very different styles of drumming (as are timbale - Tito Puenta is the man!!!).

R

That's a good assessment of it actually. They've definitely been prolific in the past five or so years. But, from a greatness perspective I don't think they've really done the damage. Other artists have done a better job of making really cool stuff. I guess you could call Stereo the Defected of tribal house.

R

The early stuff on stereo was awesome, like in 2003ish. Now its as you said very very defect records but tribal!

He was going to be Lisa's substitute music teacher on the Simpsons

check this track! Fucking cool tribal tech biz! Awesome!

Izzy the push - Dibaba - Deeplay soultec

Wicked label too!

Most of the most common house these days could be classed as "electro-house", quite different to the old "mainstream" funky house of a few years ago.

Tribal is a more raw, beat and drum oriented "heads down - bums up" kinda sound, purely made for the dancefloor. I guess you could say its structured progressively, like Rob said, "progressive is a style rather than a genre. Tribal certainly isnt about instant gratification, and it takes a good dj to play it well.

cheers Rob, I always appreciate your advice, will hunt down those mixes