Yola breaks down the Broken beat scene

On her new EP My Way, Yola revisits her dance music origins in the United Kingdom’s Broken Beat scene.

“[Broken Beat is] essentially a hybrid genre of rare groove, funk, and Afrobeat,” Yola said. “I know we are very quick to say Afrobeats with an S, but the Fela Kuti variety is a big influence in the rhythmic structure of this kind of music. There’s a lot of 80s soul in the genre and a proximity to Detroit house music in its tempo. Deeply soulified stuff, far more esthetically close to the neo soul canon and heavily influenced by jazz as well. That was the umbrella of genres that would mix to make this genre of music.”

Broken Beat was on the rise in the late 90s at the same time as other genres from UK—garage, Dubstep and Grime—were also emerging.

“Broken beat stayed under all of that noise as the underground scene because it was so rooted in jazz music,” she said. “It took a lot more schooling to be able to hang both as a vocalist, musician, and as a writer. It wasn’t that kind of thing that you could get easily in on.”

Some of the early pioneers of the genre include IG Culture, 4hero and Bugz in the Attic. The collective of DJ and producers includes Orin Walters, Matt Lord, Kaidi Tatham, Paul Dolby, Alex Phountzi, Scott Cliff and Daz-I-Kue.

“Orin was the main person that brought everybody together,” Daz-I-Kue said. “I met the guys at his apartment and it was above a fish and chip shop and one of the rooms was a studio. When we were hanging out, we were just making music and creating. We had our first remix through Slip N’ Slide Records, not the U.S. Slip-N-Slide, but the UK dance label. The big breakthrough track was when we did the 4Hero ‘Hold It Down remix’ and that blew up.”

They did one compilation for Fabric Records and toured the US and another compilation of remixes for V2 Records. Out of that, they created another breakout with “Booty La La.”

When the label asked for an album knowing the band had to tour the record, the group of producers began looking for vocalists. That’s when they were introduced to Yolanda Quartey. She became a vital part of the live band and provided vocals on the album Back In The Doghouse.

“The actual music that we’ve done is 20 years deep,” he said. “There’s still people discovering that music. She’s always been apart of the family and she’s always been a big supporter. Wherever she does, she can sing the Yellow Pages and it would be a big hit. She’s got that personality and that style and talent to be a classic soul singer. I don’t think, in terms of her doing the dance music, detracts from that. It’s also highlighting what she’s done in the past, because she’s done some phenomenal stuff which people don’t know about.”

Eventually she would move on from the scene to create her own footprint in the Americana world, but on her new EP My Way, she returns to that sonic upbringing while introducing her audience to the Broken Beat sound that shaped her as an artist.

You can learn more about the journey that led to the new EP and a playlist of her sonic inspiration here.