Ska
Ska is a musical genre originating in the late 1950s and popularized during the first half of the 1960s, which derives mainly from the fusion of music Afro-American of the time, with popular Caribbean rhythms, being the direct precursor of rocksteady and later reggae. Being a genre particularly suitable for fusions, it has been incorporated, through different variants, into the most diverse musical languages.
He was strongly associated with the rude boys and the independence of Jamaica from the United Kingdom, although he became popular around the world very soon after his birth.
History
Ska was born in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, in the early 1950s, at a time when the population was beginning to flow from rural to urban areas. In the cities, the inhabitants congregated in squares where the “sound systems” played the latest American jazz, soul and, above all, rhythm and blues news. At first, it was about vans with a noisy and primitive sound equipment. The top two were Duke Reid's Trojan and Clement “Coxsone” Dodd's Sir Coxsone Downbeat, later joined by Cecil Bustamante, known as Prince Buster. The "sound systems" had no choice but to play music from the United States, since the Jamaican music industry was non-existent. Except for some mento tapes by Stanley Motta, it was not until 1954 that the first music label, Federal, appeared, which, moreover, is oriented towards American music. Its owners traveled to Miami or New Orleans in search of new material with which to satisfy the great musical demand on the island. To enjoy exclusivity over the recordings and maintain exclusivity over the clientele, tricks were used such as removing the label from the discs so that they were not identifiable, or sending thugs (Dance Crashers) to the “sound systems” from the competition to boycott them.
The catalyst that launched the Jamaican musical career was the future Prime Minister Edward Seaga, who in 1958 founded West Indian Records Limited, producing music by local artists, reinterpreting American rhythms. That same year, Chris Blackwell produced a recording by the still unknown Laurel Aitken. A year later, Duke Reid and Clement Coxsone, seeing the possibility of having exclusive recordings for their sound systems, founded their own labels, Treasure Isle and Studio One, respectively. Late in the decade Kingston musicians began to experiment with the fusion of jazz and rhythm & American blues with autochthonous rhythms from the Caribbean, such as mento and calypso, adapting it to the taste of the island according to the trends that were imposed in the Sound Systems.
Waves of ska
First wave (traditional ska)
Federal studios recorded the song Easy Snappin, by Theophilus Beckford, produced by Clement Dodd, with Cluet Johnson on double bass and saxophonist Roland Alphonso, later founding member of The Skatalites, a band of studio on the Studio One label. This song could be described as the first recording of modern Jamaican music.
In 1961 Prince Buster finished defining it during the first recordings for his Wild Bells label. The session was financed by Duke Reid, who was to keep half of the songs to be distributed. In the end, he only received one, from trombonist Rico Rodríguez. Among the songs recorded were “They Got To Go”, “Oh Carolina” and “Shake a Leg”. According to reggae historian Steve Barrow, during those sessions, Prince Buster asked guitarist Jah Jerry to "change the gear" ("change the gear, man, change the gear"). The guitarist began to emphasize the second and fourth beats, giving rise to the new sound. Percussion was drawn from traditional Jamaican and marching styles. What Prince Buster did was reverse the shuffles of rhythm and blues, accentuating the offbeats with the help of guitar and a drum beat 4 /4, accentuating the second and fourth pulses. Starting in 1970, another ska hit by Desmond Dekker "Israelites" stood out, which served to popularize ska in England first and then in Europe.
The origins of the name ska are diffuse, and the hypotheses being considered are uncertain. The members of the band The Skatalites affirm that this name was taken from the greeting of bassist Cluet Johnson, who used as an expression when seeing his friends " Love Skavoovie ", in imitation of American hipsters. Guitarist Ernest Ranglin argued that it was the way he and other musicians used to describe the sound made by the guitar. It is likely that it was a mixture of both, since Cluet Johnson himself used ska as an onomatopoeic way of explaining the sound of this music.
Ska is already fully established as the music par excellence of Jamaica, and songs ad hoc are played on the occasion of the independence of the island from the United Kingdom, such as Sound of Freedom by Skatalites or Forward March by Derrick Morgan. In 1964, taking advantage of the New York World's Fair, this style was presented to the world in society, being chosen for it Byron Lee & The Dragonaires, with the help of Prince Buster and Peter Tosh. In the same year, he reached No. 1 on the UK charts and No. 2 on the US charts with Billboard's cover version of Barbie Gaye's 1957 hit My Boy Lollipop, performed by Millie Small, featuring Ernest Ranglin. arranging guitar, and Rod Stewart, then known as Rod the Mod, playing harmonica: it was practically a worldwide hit.
During the rest of the 1960s, it quickly established itself in Europe, thanks to the popularity it enjoyed in the United Kingdom, a country to which a large number of Jamaican stars such as Laurel Aitken, Derrick Morgan and Alton moved. Ellis to continue their careers there, as this style was widely accepted among the large West Indian colony that had immigrated to the metropolis, where the Rude Boys abounded, and among British youth, mainly among mods. Later, in the second half of the decade, as American soul becomes more leisurely and soft, ska evolves in parallel into rocksteady.
However, the timid attempts to copy that music by European musicians, gave results of not much quality, like the approximations of Georgie Fame. The attempts in Spanish were generally mediocre approximations to the original rhythm, as witnessed by the 1966 song Operación Sol by Los 4 de la Torre, or La canción del trabajo by same year as Raphael, who did not respect the original style too much, and arrived when ska had already given way to rocksteady, a more relaxed dance rhythm that allowed more elaborate vocal harmonies. It was in 1968 with Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, a ska experiment by The Beatles when the genre began to gain popularity.
Latin America
Also in the mid-60s, in Latin America, Toño Quirazco, Mayté Gaos, Los Yorsy's, Los Socios del Ritmo (Mexico), Las Cuatro Monedas and Los Diony in Venezuela, Ronnie Montalbán in Argentina, among Other artists covered classic ska songs in Spanish, which have been valued by many followers of the Jamaican sound in this part of the world. Las Cuatro Monedas, led by producer and musician Hugo Blanco, arranged songs such as Shanty Town (called Buena Suerte), Soul Time (Rhythm of the soul), I've been hurt (I feel hurt), Hold Me Tight (Caminando por la calle) and Los Dionys, who made the classic Jamaica Ska that was also performed by both Toño Quirazco and Montalbán, constituting the genesis of the Jamaican sound in these countries before the success of Ska 2 Tone (British blue beat), thanks to the fusion between punk, new wave and classic ska, when ska really managed to spread in the rest of the world thanks to this last influence.
Second Wave (Two Tone)
The second wave occurred from 1978 to 1983 approximately, because 2 Tone was a very short period: the boom was in 1979 and 1980, and little by little it ended; however, other bands in other countries, mainly the United States, Germany and Spain followed it but it was already considered the third wave.
Between the late 70s and early 80s, in the midst of the English New Wave era, the 2 Tone label —among others— made some of the most internationally famous groups known. Such were Madness and The Specials —whose keyboardist Jerry Dammers would found the Two Tone label—, The Selecter or Bad Manners. Other exponents of the time, with different styles, were The Bodysnatchers, Rhoda Dakar, The Beat (called The English Beat in the United States) and Fàshiön Music (which would later change singer and guitarist and change the genre). New Romantic, becoming Fashion).
Third Wave
While on the one hand there are bands that continue the 2 Tone style, such as The Busters, Mr Review, Scofflaws, The Pietasters, The Toasters or Pama International, others recover the classic ska, sometimes called revival, which distances itself completely from the Second Wave and is closer to the original sounds, such as The Slackers with Chris Murray, Westbound Train, Hepcat, Inspecter 7, Moon Stomper and Israelites.
It is important to note that this wave is when the "massive" from the musical genre to Latin America, an incursion that would result in the mixture of chords and instrumentalization of each country; In other words, each country would go on to develop its own form of ska using its own local instruments and tradition, this being a rather curious phenomenon since in itself Ska assimilated many of the Latin American cultures with total ease, which they generated and still generate. quite novel proposals, in addition to the fact that in many cases the songs, although they have their attitude, can talk about almost any topic without implying a loss of identity and style, if not consolidating themselves as a solid proposal in the musical field and in the corresponding subculture.
Among these proposals are: SkamadosLos Caligaris, Ska-P, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, The Refrescos, Los Intocables, Os Paralamas do Sucesso, La Matatena, Panteón Rococó, La Tremenda Korte, Salon Victoria, Los Auténticos Decadentes, La Mosca Tse-Tse, Potato, Skalariak, SeverOreveS, Dr. Calypso, Banda Bassotti, Talco, Deskaraos, The Great Republican Orchestra, Maldita Vecindad and the Children of the Fifth Courtyard, Inspector Public Disorder, JAS, X Dinero, Mishap, Los Ajenos, Seka (band), Los Garbanzos and Los Rabanes. Some television shows used Ska themes as opening and closing lines, an example of this is the animated series KaBlam! from Nickelodeon who used a lot of material from The Toasters or like the Venezuelan program "La Hojilla" which has the song "Latinoamérica" of Without suspicion.
The 'Rude Boy' Concept
In the mid 50's in Jamaica, there was a group of people, the rude boys. They were working-class youth, who liked to imitate the gangster style of the time, with black, brown, or gray pants, a white T-shirt, suspenders, and a hat: the clothing was not as stylized as it is now known. They enjoyed dancing in the dancehall with the DJs who traveled with their Trojan vans. By 1958, ska had already appeared and the island's independence struggle began. That is why it is now said that the rude boys carried weapons, something logical in a fight for independence. The rude boys of the first generation remained that way, with the evolution of ska into rocksteady until their migration and the new rhythm between Jamaica and England: skinhead reggae, where the first fusion between Jamaicans took place. and English, they wear Dr. Martens boots, pants rolled up, shaved heads and suspenders, or checked shirt, wool vest, bomber, the first generation of skinhead, whites and blacks united, the influence was the rude boy and the mods To create this new trend, they also copy the violent behavior of dance hall crashers. Their behavior was repressed by the police: they practically disappeared and some faithful ones remain, such as the suedeheads or the smoothies.
In the mid-1970s, a second generation of ska began, with musicians playing ska revival and reggae to which they added the characteristic and famed English rock rhythm. Thus the 2 Tone was born. It is a generation with more ideology, they take up the Rude Boy pride as the image of their new proposal, Equality, representing it with anti-racism and as a black and white checkered flag, expressing union, respect. Currently, many of these customs have already been lost among the new rude boys. The way of dressing of this second generation is more stylized, in the mod style, with tailored suits with shorter pants, which allowed us to see the contrast between black shoes, white socks and black pants. They also wore a white shirt, tie, suspenders, and dark glasses. The way of dancing with very marked steps was modified.
2 Tone and ska appeared almost simultaneously: street punk or street punk took the name Oi! and the young English people who liked it, many being hooligan, they took the idea of being skinheads: some of them were from the left or anarchists and the other, from the extreme nationalist right. In the 1980s, a group of skinheads opposed to the so-called neo-Nazi skinheads (boneheads: 'airheads') was created: the S.H.A.R.P. or Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (Skinheads against racial prejudice). His music is Oi!, punk, traditional ska, skinhead reggae and ska-oi!, all this already in the third wave of ska. At the beginning of the 90s another skin head group emerged, more radical but more open to social circles: the R.A.S.H. Red & Anarchist Skin Heads (Red and anarchist skinheads). They created several sections around the world, their position is more anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and multiracial, anti-homophobic, they accept punks, skankers, rudes and all those people who want to participate in active mobilization in their lines.