The Man Who Made a City Twerk
Born Jerome Temple and raised in the St. Thomas Housing Projects, DJ Jubilee is one of the founding fathers of New Orleans bounce music — the high-energy, call-and-response, bass-heavy genre that turned neighborhood block parties into a global cultural phenomenon. His 1993 cassette single contains what is widely recognized as the first recorded use of the word "twerk," a claim that puts him at the origin point of one of the most significant dance movements in modern pop culture. Before it was a hashtag, before it was a music video controversy, before it was anything the rest of the world had heard of, twerking was a New Orleans thing, and DJ Jubilee was the one who put it on tape.
Jubilee's path to music was unconventional. He worked as a special education teacher at a local high school — a fact that surprises people who only know him as the voice behind some of the most raucous party music ever recorded. He was discovered while performing at a school dance, which is the most New Orleans origin story possible: a teacher drops a beat at a school function, and a genre is born.
Bounce
Bounce music emerged from the housing projects and neighborhoods of New Orleans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a fusion of hip-hop beats, Mardi Gras Indian chants, second line rhythms, and the call-and-response traditions of the Black church. It was party music in the purest sense — designed to move bodies, to fill dance floors, to transform any space into a celebration. The production was often minimal, the lyrics were often explicit, and the energy was always maximum.
Jubilee was among the first to codify the genre on record, releasing cassette singles and performing at clubs, parties, and events throughout the city. His style was interactive and communal — he did not just play music for a crowd, he conducted them, calling out neighborhoods and housing projects by name, directing dancers through specific moves, creating a participatory experience that was less concert than collective ritual.
From the Projects to the World
For years, bounce was a purely local phenomenon — beloved in New Orleans, virtually unknown everywhere else. It was not until the mid-2010s, when mainstream artists began incorporating bounce elements into their music and twerking became a national conversation, that the rest of the world began to understand what New Orleans had been doing for decades. By then, Jubilee had already been doing it for twenty years.
DJ Jubilee remains a beloved figure in New Orleans, a man who represents the creative power of the city's most underserved communities. He came from the projects, taught special education, invented a dance craze, and helped create a genre of music that would eventually influence pop culture worldwide. That is a résumé that defies categorization, which is fitting for a city that has never fit neatly into anyone else's categories.
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