MARIA BOWLER
The Manitoban
(University of Manitoba)

WINNIPEG (CUP) — Pump-up songs have inspired the hearts and minds of warriors and athletes alike for centuries. For as long as there has been music and organized combat, they have provided surges of energy, boosted morale and kept troops marching in step.

In 480 BCE, as the Persians approached the Greek ships at the Battle of Salamis, they heard singing. According to Greek poet Aeschylus: “All the barbarians felt fear because they had been deprived of what they expected. The Greeks were singing the stately paean [battle hymn] at that time not for flight, but because they were hastening into battle and were stout of heart.”

For the Greeks, their hymn successfully intimidated the Persians and they ultimately won that crucial naval battle.

Today, athletes are our celebrity warriors and, since the mid-’90s, the battle hymn has taken on a modern twist, coined the “jock jam.”

Before these energized anthems existed in their current form, however, North American athletes had the fight song.

Fight songs are team-specific, born from when professional sports leagues were in their infancy and college sports were a main attraction. Though fundamentally similar in terms of taunting an opponent and throwing the crowd into frenzy, these were merely verbal chants, lacking the accompaniment of a bass-heavy synthesized riff.

A prime example is Yale University’s killer “Boola Boola” from 1901: “Boola, Boola, Boola, Boola / when we rough-house poor old Harvard / they will holler Boola Boo. (Rah! Rah! Rah!)”

The term jock jam originally derives from a series of compilation albums released by Tommy Boy Records and the corporate wizards at ESPN.

In the mid-’90s, the network expanded their reach outside television by collaborating with Tommy Boy — the home of artists like House of Pain and De La Soul. The outcome was an album of popular stadium anthems called Jock Rock, released in 1994, featuring classic rock hits like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “Takin’ Care of Business” by Canada’s own Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Jock Rock was so successful, ESPN and Tommy Boy sought out new music to create Jock Jams in 1995. This would eventually become the six-album series of testosterone-igniting mega-Euro-dance-hop we’ve come to know.

In the contemporary imagination, songs like 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready for This,” Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is),” Reel 2 Real’s “I Like to Move It” and Quad City DJ’s “C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” all represent the archetypical jock jam.

“Y’all ready for this?” — the familiar refrain from the aforementioned 2 Unlimited track, is accentuated by the throbbing beats and frantic energy you expect from a solid jock jam. The (in)famous chorus is sampled from The D.O.C.’s hip-hop single “It’s Funky Enough,” but when set over a hyper-kinetic Euro-dance track, its rightful place suddenly becomes the sports battlefield.

“Hit ‘Em High (The Monstars’ Anthem)” is the perfect storm of corporate sponsorship, battle themes and actual musicality. Written for the 1996 animated film Space Jam, it features the talents of reputable rappers like Method Man, LL Cool J, B-Real, Coolio and Busta Rhymes spitting pseudo-sports related rhymes about winning and being tough: “Pass me the rock, now I’m headed to the basket / get up out my way is what you better do / my tactics is unsportsmanlike conduct.”

The Space Jam soundtrack was, in many ways, the jock jam’s golden age — its classical period to our late-late Hellenistic. However, there are anthems being made in recent years that are tailor-made for the stadium, like the Black Eyed Peas’ “Rock That Body.”

Like the battle hymn was to the Greeks, the jock jam in its purest form is the sound of a higher call — to abandon oneself to the cause and kick ass.

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image: Flickr