Bubbling

Bubbling is a Dutch club style created in the late 1980s when Curaçao-born *DJ Moortje*, working at Club Voltage in The Hague, played dancehall records at the wrong speed and built a new sound from pitched-up riddims, galloping drums and chopped vocal chips. Adopted by the Afro-Dutch and Antillean communities of the Randstad, it became the soundtrack of fiercely competitive dance battles through the 1990s, circulating on mixtapes rather than official releases. Bubbling's tempos sit far above its Jamaican sources, and its tracks are functional tools for dancers: short, loop-driven and relentlessly upbeat, laying the rhythmic foundation from which bubbling house later developed.