A long overdue doco looking at the electronic side of Chicago music from the last two and a half decades. Brilliantly done, From Jack To Juke: 25 Years of Ghetto House starts with The Warehouse (where else?) and Frankie Knuckles going through Trax Records up to Ghetto-house in it’s current state as Juke music. By swerving the “kids on corners talking about being the future” style and explaining the roots and progression of the music and underground mentality that led up to juke and footwork, From Jack.. adds unexpected weight to the genre’s legitimacy and durability as a music form. So despite it’s premise, this film is a long way from Footcrab.
At around an hour in length it has time to deliver it’s message properly, with a lot of interviews seemingly shot from the hip, portraying honest opinions based on passed down knowledge as opposed to overkill media research. The producers and deejays pushing juke are proper historians of their city’s music history, letting the sound evolve naturally from around 1998. Massive respect for this, as you can’t help but wonder if American hip-hop was more involved in this style of production would it have sold-out and watered itself down years ago?
The producer behind the film is Chicago native Sonali Aggarwal, who’s pretty unknown to us, though off the back of this we do plan on making time to watch her 2009 production What Ever Happened To Hip Hop.
Big ups to all involved here, undoubtedly going to swing some opinions on juke and footwork for those that’ve been sitting on the fence.