Ska is a
music genre that originated in
Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to
rocksteady and
reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with
American jazz and rhythm and blues.
Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the offbeat. It was developed in
Jamaica in the 1960s when Stranger Cole, Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play
American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs. In the early 1960s,
ska was the dominant
music genre of
Jamaica and was popular with British mods and with many
skinheads.
Music historians typically divide the history of
ska into three periods:
… Read more the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the
2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican
ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of
punk rock forming
ska-
punk; and third wave
ska, which involved
bands from a wide range of countries around the world, in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Rude Boy (or rudie) is a slang term that originated in 1960s Jamaican street culture, and that is still used today. In the late 1970s, there was a revival in England of the terms
rude boy and rude girl, among other variations, being used to describe fans of two-tone
ska. The use of these terms moved into the more contemporary
ska-
punk movement as well. In the UK, the terms
rude boy and rude girl are used in a way similar to gangsta, yardie, or badman. In the 1960s, the Jamaican diaspora introduced
rude boy music and fashion to the UK, which influenced the mod and skinhead subcultures. In the late 1970s, the term
rude boy and
rude boy fashions came back into use after the
ska band The
… Read more Specials and their record label
2 Tone Records instigated a brief but influential
ska revival. In this spirit,
The Clash contributed "Rudie Can't Fail" on their 1979 album, London Calling.
In
Jamaica, the rude boys and rude girls were young Jamaican thugs from the ghettos, fallen into delinquency and sowing terror, some being real gangsters. In rage against the institutions, the economic fatality, they spit out their resentment of unemployment, injustices, and the immobility of capitalist
society. Quite the opposite of teddy boys. They regularly go to sound systems where they sometimes play for a living.
In Great Britain, the rough boys listen mainly to
ska music, which is characterized by groups like Madness or
The Specials, which cover certain famous tracks of Prince Buster, recorded with Two-Tone Records, the "revival" of Jamaican
ska, after the wave of the
punk movement which saw the resurgence of former Jamaican artists, like Laurel Aitken, nicknamed the godfather of
ska. They mingled with English mods in the 1960s, which gave birth to
skinheads. the skinhead movement is, therefore, in its origins and in its traditions, a mixed and multicultural movement; it is not uncommon to see black
skinheads in
1969 although many white
skinheads will become politicized on the
far right thereafter.
2 tone is a genre of
ska music that fused traditional Jamaican
ska music with elements of
punk rock and new wave
music. Its name derives from
2 Tone Records, a record label founded in 1979 by Jerry Dammers of
The Specials, and references a desire to transcend and defuse racial tensions in Thatcher-era Britain. Many two-tone groups, such as
The Specials,
The Selecter, and
The Beat featured a mix of black, white, and multiracial people. It was part of the second wave of
ska music and it influenced the third wave
ska and
ska-
punk movements. The two-tone sound originated among young musicians in Coventry in the West Midlands of England, who grew up listening to 1960s Jamaican
music.
… Read more They combined influences from
ska,
reggae, and
rocksteady with elements of
punk rock and new wave.
Bands considered part of the genre include
The Specials,
The Selecter, Madness,
The Beat,
Bad Manners, The Bodysnatchers, and Akrylykz.
The Specials' keyboard player Jerry Dammers coined the term "two-tone". Dammers, with the assistance of Horace Panter and graphic designer John "Teflon" Sims, developed the iconic Walt Jabsco logo (a man in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, pork pie hat, white socks, and black loafers) to represent the two-tone genre. The logo, based on an early album-cover photo of Peter Tosh, included an added black-and-white check pattern.
?
Skinhead reggae? has come to mean a subgenre of
reggae with influences taken from
ska and
rocksteady as well as soul/R?n?B, often with fast Hammond organ leads and danceable beats, loved by
adolescents of the British
working class. But
reggae itself became popular among white British youth after
ska and
rocksteady had receded, more or less as skinhead became an identifiable subculture in the
United Kingdom, in 1968, peaking in
1969, and then disappearing into seudehead, glam/glitter, etc., by the early 70s. Therefore, it is something of a misnomer to speak of ?
skinhead reggae? as separate from the early
reggae that was popular amongst white kids, because those white kids were nearly
… Read more all
skinheads. It was not until at least a year or more into the close association between the musical form and the fashion that the tunes now inextricably linked to the subculture by their lyrics began to emerge. Many of the
skinhead reggae songs were covers or else more well-known early
reggae/
ska/
rocksteady tunes that had been reworked, sometimes with new lyrics specifically about
skinheads. Symarip?s ?Skinhead Moonstomp,? possibly the most classic (and one of the most primitive)
skinhead reggae song.
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