1.3: What is ska music?
Description
This article is from the Ska FAQ, by Tomas Willis tomas@twillis.com with numerous contributions by others.
1.3: What is ska music?
Ska is dance music, first and foremost. 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 was *not* recently invented by ska-influenced bands like No
Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish or any other 90's
band.(1) Ska *is* a forty-year-old music form now in a fresh, vigorous
"3rd Wave". Ska is rich in history, broad in scope and guaranteed to
make you shake your groove thang.
For the musically inclined, here is a description of the rhythmic
structure of ska:
Musically, Ska is a fusion of Jamaican mento rhythm with R&B, with
the drum coming in on the 2nd and 4th beats, and the guitar
emphasizing the up of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats. The drum
therefore is carrying the blues and swing beats of the American
music, and the guitar expressing the mento sound.
`[SB(JJ)]'
Brendan Tween (URL:mailto:brendog@panix.com) mentions that the
Skatalites frequently used a G-Em-C-D guitar progression, while most
modern ska uses a straight 1-4-5 progression (A-D-E C-F-G), although
A-D-E9-A is another possible progression.
Bob Timm, of the Ska Mining Company, offers some additional thoughts
about `What Counts as Ska', at
http://ska.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa100397.htm.
Ska features a strong bass and drum rhythm section, guitars,
keyboards and brass. *I* say, the bigger the ska band, the better.
---------- Footnotes ----------
(1) Props to these bands for their commercial success, but don't
let the hype convince you that their sound is the ska sound!
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