First of all what is Ska Music might you ask? Ska is a dance music. Ska was a Jamaican dance music that swept out of Jamaica in the early 1960s to shake the butts of working- and middle-class Jamaicans before going on, via the West Indian immigrant connection, to the UK, and then on to the world. In the UK, Ska was also known as blue beat music. Rocksteady, and later, reggae sprang from the loins of Ska in the late 1960s. Mid-1970s and 1980s/1990s revivals of this popular dance form have kept this music alive and fun through the present. The Ska beat on drums and bass, rhythm guitar, lots of horns and maybe a Farfisa or Hammond organ --- that's the Ska sound.
Ska is a forty-year-old music form now in a fresh, vigorous 3rd wave (or fourth wave depending on whom you talk to). Ska is rich in history, broad in scope and guaranteed to make you shake your groove thang.
Where did Ska music come from? Well, In the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica rhythm & blues sounds from the African-American experience in America were adapted by Jamaican musicians and blended with traditional Jamaican mento, spiced with jazz, as well as ya-ya, Calypso, and other island sounds and cranked out of dance hall systems and mobile sound systems mounted on huge trucks.
Many of the elements of Ska can be heard in recordings from the late 1950s. It wasn't until these were all brought together in the Kingston scene under the influences of Coxsone, Prince Buster, Clue J, Duke Reid and others that Ska emerged as a distinct sound. By the time Ska made its "world debut" at the 1964 New York World's Fair at the Jamaican exhibition it was an established phenomenon at home.
Ska emphasised the upstroke of the rhythm instead of the downstroke, creating a sound that is undeniably catchy and Danceable. It was very popular in England in the early and mid-60s, and this popularity planted the musical seeds that grew into second-wave Ska as Two-Tone bands rediscovered these discs in the late 70s.
Ska came to England with immigrants in the early 1960s. Known in the UK briefly as "Jamaican Blues", Ska inspired the formation of the Blue Beat record company, providing yet another name for the Ska sound:
"Blue beat". Ska gained popularity in the UK amongst the members of the "Mod" scene, leading to the residual association of small-brimmed trilby (pork-pie hats) and scooters with Ska music. About the time "skinheads" in the UK were getting into Ska, Trojan Records was still releasing Ska hits into the UK top 10 (as late as 1969 or 1970), but by that time rock-steady and reggae were waxing as Ska waned, for a while, at least. |
