Canarian breakbeat: Tenerife and the culture of broken beats
The Canary Islands, and Tenerife in particular, carry their own culture of old skool rave, hardcore, jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat. Local press already treats that language as part of a shared Canarian repertoire: in Tenerife there are records that work at a wedding and at carnival. Its roots go back to the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. What is dated most clearly is the start of that decade: the rave explosion that DJ Jonay himself places in 1990, and his professional beginning, which the chronicles fix in 1993.
The singularity is not that the island invented a subgenre with a closed name. It is that, there, old skool rave, hardcore, jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat have worked as one repertoire, far more permeable than international nu skool breaks or than the Andalusian model of broken beats. Jonay has worked all of those grounds. The shops and labels still active in 2026 still sell them together.
Origins: from acid house to old skool rave
The wave reached Tenerife with British selectors who were also working the clubs in the south of the island. Jonay has told it with a local image: for years people came to Tenerife from all over Europe, and they called the island the English playground, because they came to enjoy themselves at its parties, in parallel with the first raves in England. Acid house, hardcore and breakbeat did not arrive as a late import from the southern mainland. They arrived through that direct contact with the United Kingdom, on a small and highly recognisable island circuit.
His published biography places the first records in 1991 and the debut, at the age of twelve, at a Ku matinee in 1992, through DJ Kruger. In November 1993, aged thirteen, he was paid for the first time at Pub Ensalada, kilometre 2.5 in La Esperanza, later known as K-2, through DJ Coco. That same circle brought him into Universal Grooves 105.0 radio, with Coco, Tap & Tan and Day-B. Hip hop, he says, has never left the rhythms he plays.
Tenerife as the historical centre
The public archive — names, dates, carnival, the shop, the documentary — is sharper in Tenerife than in the rest of the archipelago. Santa Cruz is the city of the name. The south, with its clubs and its European tourism, is where the British ear settled. The scale was never that of the mainland mega-raves. It was that of an island on which a few DJs could become a shared language.
That does not lock the story inside one city. The press speaks of a shared Canarian repertoire, and the music travels between islands. In the current catalogue, the other Canarian entry in this language is AndrewFx, from La Palma. The historical centre that can be told year by year is still Tenerife.
DJ Jonay and the making of a local language
Jonay Amador, DJ Jonay, born in Santa Cruz, is the figure the public uses to name the style. On the island, people ask other DJs for “Jonay-style music”, and a track can be described as sounding “very DJ Jonay”. It is not a label for a single genre. Professional presentations place him in old skool rave, hardcore, breakbeat and drum and bass at once. In 2014 the International Breaks Awards named him best national oldskool and breaks DJ. He has also been named best DJ in the Canary Islands at the Click & Roll awards. He plays the British circuit — Fantazia, Rejuvenation, Time Machine, Centreforce — and remains a headline figure inside the archipelago.
The local calendar has fixed him in place. 5 December, under the brand The Rave Kulture, is the annual date for that sound on the island; the press and the ticket sales have for years described it as a show that sells out, with the room at Gekko Club in Santa Cruz. Carnival has been the other public stage: in 2023 the city council programmed a night called The Rave Kulture at Francisco La Roche, with Jonay and British old-school guests, among them General Levy. The name works as a bridge between ages: people who were at the parties of the 1990s and people arriving now share the same floor.
The Canarian sound: rave, hardcore, jungle and breakbeat
What this scene sounds like is better answered with a list of things that live together than with a single tempo. The repertoire the island recognises joins early-1990s rave, hardcore, jungle, drum and bass, UK garage and breakbeat. In the generations releasing music now, a contemporary club breaks sound is added, often with bass weight and with old-skool memory inside the same track. Suga7 has described his own discography in those terms: more old-skool periods, more 2-step and garage, more breaks, without letting go of the broken beat.
That permeability sets Tenerife apart from two neighbouring maps. International nu skool breaks organised itself as a cleaner, more closed club product. Andalusian breakbeat organised itself as a mass culture, with radio and the motorway. Here the ear stayed with British old skool, and the categories overlapped. A shop in 2026 that advertises itself as a specialist in breakbeat and hardcore, and that at the same time lists jungle, drum and bass, UK garage and breaks, is describing the same continuum Jonay has played for thirty years.
Rave Kulture and the memory of the scene
Jonay is the driving force behind Rave Kulture, the documentary directed by Eduardo Cubillo and also presented as Rave Culture: A New Era. The idea is his. With Cubillo, a school friend, he decided to tell the birth of rave culture and its first protagonists, with England as the main board. The weight of the story falls on the producers, DJs and makers of the breakbeat–jungle pairing, and it includes how the wave reached Tenerife through those British selectors in the south.
In late 2025 the film started its Canarian screenings: a private pass at TEA, then Espacio Price and the Alcampo cinemas in La Laguna. In 2026 it was still travelling, with screenings announced in London, Amsterdam, New York and other cities, while Jonay played carnival and a Centreforce date in London. The documentary tells the British origin because a Tenerife DJ wanted a record of the culture the island had made its own.
A school beyond a single DJ
Peejay, also from Tenerife, started in the early 1990s in the acid-house fever, moved through breakbeat and hardcore, and later leaned toward house and techno without leaving vinyl or old-skool references. People who follow hardcore production from the islands place him in that Tenerife school. The point is to keep thirty years of booths from being read as the biography of one name. A generation learned broken beats as British rave reached the archipelago, and it has kept releasing decades later.
The arrival of Andalusian breakbeat
Suga7 — Agustín López, from Tenerife — makes it possible to date the meeting with the southern mainland without turning that meeting into the origin of the island. In a 2026 interview he said that what drew him to breakbeat was drum and bass, and that before that breakbeat what he loved most was drum and bass and old skool, whose first steps he knew in the Canary Islands. Breakbeat “in its full essence”, he says, he discovered later, in 2011, through a friend who worked in Andalusia and, on returning to Tenerife, brought back sets by DJ Rasco, DJ Man and Anita Breaks.
That local tradition preceded, at least for one generation of the scene, the direct reception of Andalusian breakbeat. The influence from the south, well into the twenty-first century, reinforced and redirected part of the island ear toward a club breakbeat more recognisable as such. It does not replace the previous twenty years of rave, hardcore and broken rhythms.
Suga7 and the second generation
Suga7 started DJing around 2010 and producing around 2014. In 2015 he founded the label Wasted Recordings with Obscene Frequenzy. He has more than a hundred tracks, with a presence on breaks charts and in the specialist press. The EP Wasted Vol. 2, which put him in the pages of La Provincia in June 2026, aimed at a fusion of old skool and present-day breakbeat: material that could carry a listener back and still sound current. His entry in this archive is that of a Tenerife producer inside the contemporary breaks circuit.
The archive’s catalogue adds another Canarian name with a page of its own. AndrewFx is the project of Andrés Ramos Pérez, born in 1987 on La Palma. He works in breakbeat, breaks, UK bass, drum and bass and jungle. His biography places the serious start of releasing in 2022: the first demos went to Andalusian labels and, after a positive response, to imprints abroad. It is another island and another decade, and it repeats a gesture already seen in Suga7: the ear was formed in the Canary Islands, and contact with Andalusia came later, as a route for publication.
The continuity between generations is also on a record. On The Rave Kulture Records, catalogue RK003 by The Rave Doctor, Ruff in the Jungle, pairs the original 1993 mix with a version credited to DJ Jonay, Suga7 and Obscene Frequenzy, plus a thirtieth-anniversary re-edit. Obscene Frequenzy, associated on his entry with the British breaks circuit, is Suga7’s label partner and the third name on that cut. The record puts the DJ who named the style and the producer releasing it now on the same side.
Labels, shops and physical culture
Monky Records, a vinyl shop in Tenerife — with a published address in Santa Cruz, and activity also described in Tejina — defines itself as a specialist in breakbeat and hardcore. In 2026 its weekly lists still move hardcore, jungle, drum and bass, UK garage and breaks, including reissues of British classics from the 1990s. This is not a picturesque detail. It is infrastructure: a physical place, on the island, where that repertoire is bought, ordered and talked about. A scene that still has a shop has a location different from one that lives only on a platform.
The Rave Kulture Records is the vinyl label tied to Jonay’s brand. The editions circulating in shops present it as a Spanish label. The visible catalogue gathers old-skool recoveries: besides the RK003 already mentioned, RK006 returns Strictly Drum and Bass by The Enigmatist, a 1992 track, to vinyl, and RK010, on sale at Monky with a 2025 date, recovers Rockin’ Down the House by MI 7, a 1991 British hardcore record with breakbeat, dub and reggae. Wasted Recordings occupies the other pole: the digital breaks label on which Suga7 and Obscene Frequenzy release the current generation. One keeps the historical repertoire on twelve-inch. The other is still writing it.
The revival after the pandemic
In 2024, asked about the golden age of rave culture in Tenerife, Jonay pointed to the present. Understood as a party, he said, it is at its best moment, with festivals and large events. The essence, he added, has not disappeared even in the quieter periods. If the question looked backward, the stretch he would cite runs from 1988 to 1993. He also described the change in the craft: there used to be few DJs and now there are a great many, and part of the production is done from home.
Suga7’s 2026 interview no longer presents breakbeat as an archival recovery. It treats it as a shared repertoire, and the producer is still releasing. The record shared with Jonay, and the shop that in 2026 is still specialising in that sound, close the argument: the island is not only remembering a 1990s school. It is playing it, pressing it and selling it.
A distinct scene inside Spanish breakbeat
Canarian breakbeat shares an ear with the British tradition and a social form different from the Andalusian one. The regional radio station and the motorway network that held the southern mainland together are not the map of this story. Here the genre was carried by contact with British clubs and selectors, by long-running booths, by carnival as a public stage, and by a permeability between rave, hardcore, jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat that did not ask anyone to choose a single tag.
Tenerife is the historical centre the sources can describe with names, dates and places. The frame is Canarian because the press speaks of a repertoire of the archipelago, because there are entries from other islands in the same language, and because the music travels between them. Calling it only Tenerife breakbeat would leave out that self-perception. Telling it as a chapter of the southern mainland would erase the old skool that, for the people who lived it, was already on the island when the Andalusian sets arrived.
Present and legacy
In 2026 the scene has memory and a working practice at the same time. The documentary travels. Jonay is still playing carnival and the 5 December date. Monky Records is still supplying hardcore, jungle and breaks on vinyl. The Rave Kulture Records is still pressing recoveries of British rave on a Spanish label. Suga7 is releasing present-day breakbeat from Tenerife, and AndrewFx, from La Palma, belongs to the same map of broken beats. The legacy is not a golden age closed in 1993. It is a repertoire the island recognises as its own, and that a later generation is still reformulating.