Apache

The record

The Incredible Bongo Band was a studio project started in 1972 by producer Michael Viner with Perry Botkin Jr. and Mike Curb. Their album Bongo Rock was released in 1973 on Pride Records, distributed by MGM, and was recorded at Can-Base Studios in Vancouver to take advantage of Canadian content rules. The sessions featured Jim Gordon on drums and King Errisson on bongos and percussion. Among the covers was “Apache”, Jerry Lordan's instrumental first made famous by The Shadows in 1960. The Bongo Band's “Apache” runs just under five minutes, and the album also included a long cover of Iron Butterfly's “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. The album reached only number 197 on the Billboard album chart and number 58 on the soul album chart.

The break

In the middle of the band's version, the guitar melody drops away and leaves an unusually long stretch of drums and bongos. The combination of Gordon's kit and Errisson's hand drums gave dancers a sustained, driving section, and gave DJs a long passage to extend. Where most funk breaks last a few bars, this one runs long enough that a DJ with two copies could keep a dance floor going for minutes.

Into hip hop

In the Bronx in the 1970s, DJ Kool Herc played “Apache” at his parties, cutting between two copies to stretch the break for dancers, and Grandmaster Flash did the same; he later cut it into “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” in 1981. The Sugarhill Gang recorded their own “Apache” that year. The song was included on Ultimate Breaks and Beats, and producers sampled it through every decade that followed, from LL Cool J's “You Can't Dance”, the Geto Boys' “Assassins”, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's “Men at Work” and Young MC's “Know How” to The Roots' “Thought @ Work”, Nas's “Made You Look” and Jay-Z and Kanye West's “That's My B****”.

Legacy

The track has often been called hip hop's national anthem, and in 2006 The New York Times described Bongo Rock as one of the musical cornerstones of rap. The 2013 documentary Sample This, directed by Dan Forrer and narrated by Gene Simmons, told the story of the recording. In 2022 Rolling Stone placed the Incredible Bongo Band's version at number 31 on its list of the 200 greatest dance songs. The break also became a staple of drum and bass, used by producers such as Goldie.