Posted on 08/15/2015 3:18:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If there's one musical style that epitomizes summer, it might be the loping island style of ska. It caught fire in early '60s Jamaica, a precursor to reggae.
Player utilities PopoutShare 00:0000:00 download This story is based on a radio interview. Listen to the full interview. But ska has gone through a few iterations.
Ska is really a fusion of American R&B with Jamaican jazz, says Brad Klein, a Minneapolis-based filmmaker who traced the history of ska in a documentary, "Legends of Ska. Without Ska, there is no reggae."
"Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff ... all started in ska as teenagers. So, ska is the mother of reggae," he says.
Klein's love affair with ska began when he was working at a reggae record company, selling, doing publicity and promotion. His documentary includes three crucial early ska tracks.
"My goal was to teach people and to show the world that there's much more to Jamaican music than Bob Marley," says Klein.
Not only has ska had worldwide revivals in the punk 1970s (think The Specials, Madness, English Beat) and the 1990s (think The Mighty Mighty Bosstones), it still is popular. Klein says it's most popular in Mexico and Latin America and endures in Japan as well.
Here are a few classic ska tracks.
Guitarist and Skatalites founder Ernest Ranglin is cited as a pioneer by The Guinness Book of Reggae as a pioneer, which says his "Shufflin' Jug, recorded in 1959, is widely regarded as the first ska record. In a 1998 interview, Ranglin considers another of his arrangements, Theophilus Beckford's "Easy Snappin,'" as one of the most pronounced early examples of the rougher sound then associated with the slums and the late-night sound-system street parties.
"In those days, nobody knew what this music would become. I was afraid of hurting my image,'' Ranglin recalled. "I stayed in the background of everything I did.''
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ranglin helped recruit the backbone of ska and jazz pioneers — saxophonist Roland Alphonso, trombonist Don Drummond, keyboardists Jackie Mittoo and Monty Alexander — who would make Jamaican music distinctive over the next two decades.
By the mid-1960s, ska was evolving into a style known as rock steady, which then moved into reggae. Here's Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)," from that era.
Check out the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra,
they are jammin!
Their Guns of Navarone is awesome along with
Baby Elephant walk and others, would love to
see them here in the states.
Kind of a tautology.
It is like saying you cant have math(s) without arithmetic.
Obligatory post to this thread, because of my screen name.
I love ska, especially 2nd and 3rd Wave. Thanks for the post, Rudy.
Another old one to check out is The Ethiopians. Great band.
Interesting. In the 80s I used to explain Ska as a double-time Reggae.
I saw a documentary on Bob Marley where they were interviewing some of the early ska guys. One was asked how they came up with it, and he said, well, we just couldn’t play very well and the time was off, but it sounded good anyway, so we kept doing it.
Ska Ping
Yes!
In that vein, I read a (possibly apocryphal) story that one of the reasons for reggae’s popularity was that the rhythm of its music closely approximated the beating of the human heart.
Desmond Dekker was an awesome talent.
I was big into the huge ska explosion in Orange county CA during the late 90s - Aquabats, Save Ferris, No Doubt, Reel Big Fish - it came and went so quickly. Ska was so huge back then!
Onnnne Step Beeeeyooooooooooonnnd!!!
Speaking of which... When I was a grad student in math, preparing for exams, if I felt like listening to music, I could only get any kind of productive studying done while listening to classical or Rastafarian music. Anything else was too distracting. It was bizarre. I never listened to Rastafarian any other time. That stuff does something to your brain!
“My Boy Lollipop”
The musical cross between Duke Ellington and Jimi Hendrix.
One of the great musicians of the 20th century and probably didn't make a million dollars the whole time.
Ernest Ranglin is 83 years old and still playing.
Get up in the morning slaving for bread sir
So that every mouth can be fed
Poor me, the Israelite Aah...
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