The Incredible Bongo Band - Bongo Rock LP
Year Released: 1973
Genre: Funk / Breakbeat / Instrumental Rock
Description:
“Bongo Rock” by The Incredible Bongo Band is a landmark instrumental funk and breakbeat LP released in 1973 on Pride Records, a subsidiary of MGM. Conceived and produced by Michael Viner, a film-industry executive and producer, the album was initially intended as a studio project to create percussion-heavy covers and groove-based tracks for film soundtracks. Instead, it became one of the most influential recordings in Hip-Hop and DJ culture, thanks to its explosive drum breaks and raw, percussive energy.
Recorded in Los Angeles with a rotating cast of top studio musicians — often referred to collectively as the Incredible Bongo Band — the album blends funk, rock, Latin percussion, and cinematic arrangements into a series of rhythm-driven instrumentals. Featuring Jim Gordon and King Errisson on drums and bongos, the performances are full of unrelenting groove and analog grit.
The LP’s title track, “Bongo Rock,” is a reimagining of Preston Epps’s 1959 hit, but supercharged with layered percussion, fuzz guitar, and tightly arranged horn stabs. However, it’s the track “Apache” that became legendary — its iconic drum break became one of the most sampled and scratched loops in Hip-Hop history, famously used by Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa during the Bronx block parties of the 1970s.
Beyond “Apache,” cuts like “Bongolia,” “Let There Be Drums,” and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” contain equally fierce break sections that have been endlessly mined by producers and DJs. The album’s combination of open drum passages, layered congas, and bongos created the perfect blueprint for the early Hip-Hop breakbeat aesthetic.
“Bongo Rock” was later compiled by Breakbeat Lou and Lenny Roberts for inclusion in their Ultimate Breaks & Beats series, further immortalizing its drum breaks as foundational material for golden-age Hip-Hop production. Artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC, DJ Shadow and The Roots have sampled tracks from the LP, while its influence also extended into early breakdance culture and electronic production.
Musically, “Bongo Rock” captures a unique intersection between funk, rock, and cinematic rhythm — an accidental masterpiece of breakbeat music. Though conceived as a studio curiosity, it became one of the most sampled and celebrated records in modern music history, its grooves still reverberating through Hip-Hop, funk, and breakbeat culture decades later.