Remember Your Roots, Rudy

Listen up kids,I know it's easy to think that ska is some new wave of music just like MTV punk was a couple of years ago, but just like the time that you felt so out of it when you found out that Rancid used to be the vanguard groundbreaking band Operation Ivy, (you did know that, right?) you are now being saturated with innumerable third wave bands of all spinoff styles, & somewhere between the local rock station & the mall, the history of ska is getting lost, in fact, it's being prostituted by the major corporations who are looking for that new sound that will be so hot with all the kids & make them more money than Hanson & the Spice Girls combined. Do not be deceived! Ska has a rich cultural history & was spawned from racial injustice & ghetto mentalities, it was the freedom cry that not only spawned a three decade old musical style, but was also the progenitor of perhaps the most spiritually relevant of all world beat musics of the century, reggae. This article isn't so much a dissertation about which musical style is supreme, as far as I'm concerned, style is just that, it's just a personal preference, & this isn't to imply that roots ska is any more valid than ska-core, ska-oi!, ska-punk, or any of the never ending hybrids of third wave ska, but when I see white power skins showing up at a show all elbows & steeltoes, or all white bands invented by gigantic multimillion dollar conglomerates profiting off an entire culture that it refuses to support, well that's just the kind of injustice that made ska first clench itÕs fist in anger & shake it defiantly in the man's face in the first place!

Going Back To Kingston

Between the years 1959 & 1962 & on the emerald isle of Jamaica are the birthdates & birthplace of ska. This, naturally, predates reggae, so for all the new school kids who thought that ska was a blend of reggae & punk, it's time to turn off the No Doubt, & take out your notebooks. As the 50's came to a close, Calypso & a rumba style known as Mento were the most popular styles of music played by the natives on hot tropical nights in sweaty dancehalls. The newer generation of kids were brought up on jazz, African tribal, & not before too long, the powerful effect of American R & B, as well as the neophyte rock & roll. Jamaican music had a lot of diverse political influences due to racial prejudice against blacks & the general level of poverty experienced by the Jamaican populace. Much of the music was played as an outcry from the oppressed residents of the impoverished slums that peppered Jamaica, particularly the childhood home of the late prophet Robert Nesta 'Bob' Marley, Trench Town. Kids coming out of Trench Town were as rebellious as any generation, they rebelled & debated with the elders bout the doctrines of Rastafari, smoked sacred ganja, chased island girls, raged against black oppression, & fashioned crude musical instruments to express themselves with. The hardcore kid perceived themselves as gangsters, & they dressed the part wearing sharkskin suits, dark glasses & pork pie hats, taking the easy way out of the slums, packing guns & playing the cheap thug. These young hoodlums were known as Rude Boys, & this is where we steal the rudeboy look from. Jamaican recording studios were as primitive & substandard, especially by today's digital technology, as the players & their homestrung guitars. Yet the tinny one & two track recordings were eagerly sought after & played all night long on makeshift PA systems from the back of pickup trucks for all to hear & enjoy. It was one of these humble DJ's & soundmen, (who were known as 'toasters') with his own D.I.Y. attitude who decided to start his own record label, & not a musician at all, who would be the father of this new musical style. Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd had founded a place where aspiring ghetto denizens could audition & attain a bit of local fame, & it was this same record label, the legendary Studio One, that would be the humble manger for the birthing of both ska, & later at the hands of Desmond Dekker & Lee "Scratch" Perry, reggae.

Behind his liquor store on Love Lane, Coxsone would work with local favorites such as Cluett "Clue-J" Johnson, Ernest Ranglin, & others to find a distinctive Jamaican sound that would take them in a different direction from the blues. They styled a shuffle boogie R & B island flavored music that emphasized the offbeat with a galloping twelve bar blues accent, & dubbed it 'ska', short for 'skavoovie', an island term of approval. Coxsone began putting down the new sounds on vinyl, (remember at the time Studio One was a one track studio!) the first ska track ever being "Easy Snapping" by Theophilus Beckford, joined by other soon to be ska founding fathers that included Roland Alphonso. The record was a big hit, & was played on radio & dancehalls islandwide. Coxsone would put together a number of ensembles, with some resident members filling in playing trombone or sax on all the sessions, among them ska's first real ska band, the Skatalites, featuring virtuoso Don Drummond on trombone, Roland Alphonso & Tommy McCook on tenor sax, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Johnny 'Dizzy' Moore on trumpet, Jah Jerry on guitar, Lloyd Nibbs on drums, Lloyd Brevitt on bass & Jackie Mittoo on keyboards. Another vanguard band to originally play ska at the command of Coxsone was the Wailers, originally the Wailing Wailers, featuring three Rude Boys who would later go their separate ways and become three of the biggest legends in reggae music, Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingstone, & naturally, Bob Marley.

Simmer Down!

The Wailers were instant hits with the island's populace of Rude Boys, playing classics such as "I'm Still Waiting", "It Hurts To Be Alone", & "Simmer Down". "Simmer Down" set The Wailers apart from the typical bands, incorporating a serious message to teenage criminals to control their tempers, & paved the way for the mating of the unique sound with the heavy spiritual message found in reggae's Rastafari.

Coxsone would upgrade the studio one generation behind the island's big recording studio, buying their old castway equipment, & working his way up through two & four track recordings. The average pressing was 300 pieces of vinyl, & included releases from Toots Hibbert & the Maytals, Don Drummond & The Skatalites, Drumbago, Desmond Dekkar & the Four Aces, Sir lord Comic, BaBa Brooks, Jackie Edwards, Laurel Aitken, Stranger Cole, The Charms, & many others too numerous to list. Coxsone had trouble getting airplay, as competition was tough, but continued to successfully hold outdoor concerts from the back of his truck, employing the talents of amateur boxer Prince Buster as a bodyguard to keep rivals & rudys from stealing or trashing his equipment.

Inner London Violence

The ska dance craze ignited fires under asses of musicians overseas, being imported via West Indian clubs in London, where it was picked up by the local kids, in the middle of the Mod phase, & underwent a transformation into bluebeat. Musicians like Georgie Fame, The Blue Flames, & Millie Small broke British Ska onto the scene, & the ripples they made in the music scene pond cascaded into ska's second wave. Characterized by a new breed of working class skinhead, whose attire was based on rugged clothes used in manual labor, like Doc Martin boots, bracers, & flight jackets, these white English kids played with black island kids, & to differentiate themselves from the racist skins so wildly portrayed in the media, they adopted the black & white rudeboy suits for their own. In fact, any black & white combination became synonymous with ska music, especially checkerboard patterns, as a sign of racial unity, & this was the origin of the two tone era of ska.

Another working class advent was the scooter, a cheap, reliable, attainable form of transportation favored by Mods & Skinheads alike. Vespa scooters were king, followed close after by Lambrettas, & a number of mid European Vespa knock offs. Some factions of rude boys preferred the stocker factory showroom look, the Mods loved heaping their rides with as many lights, mirrors & luggage racks as could be fitted, & the scooter boys stripped the bikes down to the bare frames, sometimes even converting them into choppers. Bands that helped immortalize this era included The Special A.K.A., who later would be known as The Specials, who started the 2 Tone record label, Bad Manners, The Selector, The Body Snatchers, The English Beat, the Belle Stars, & the commercially successful Madness.

It can't be stressed enough how important the issue of racism became at this point in ska's history. Nationalist white power skins, never known for an overabundance of intelligence, who unfortunately found their way into scooter rallies & Allnighters, tried adopting ska as their own, ironic considering ska's true origins. Even Desmond Dekker was personally assaulted at a scooter club sponsored concert in Great Yarmouth in 1986. Although the combination of ska with oi! can be an intoxicating mix, the fact that neo nazi illiterates totally missed such blatantly obvious examples of racial protest & anti-slavery songs that are found in most ska music is a testament to the ignorance & mental retardation found with modern day fascism.

At this point, most people are familiar with the coming of the third wave of ska. The freedom cry of the original Trench Town rude boy was taken up by the blue collar nutter & hooligan of inner city London. Added to the diverse musical heritage that ska enjoyed was another musically emergent force of rebellion that sprung from the guts of angry street kids worldwide in the form of punk rock. Punk was a trans Atlantic medium, crossing over thousands of miles of ocean between the Ramones & the Sex Pistols. As early as 1982, Moon Records of NYC was pressing vinyl from the Toasters, Urban Blight, Second Step, & other domestic bands that inspired by 2 tone, & empowered by by punk & hardcore's D.I.Y. self sufficiency. There's a host of bands who are either still playing today who have survived from the first days of ska, & tons of new bands who have come up specializing in preserving the traditional roots sounds. Crossing over boundaries of both national origin & musical style, ska has spawned at least a half dozen of hybrid sounds, from ska-punk, ska-core, trad-ska, roots ska, bluebeat, rocksteady, 2 tone, ska-Oi!, horror-ska, & even more sub categories that true skaficionados will split hairs over. But despite the divisions in style, true ska kids will still hold to the original defining ideals of Jamaican ska, that of freedom & independence.

The traditional ska bands remain on indy labels, preferring to keep ownership of the music to themselves, & have resisted the giant corporate labels trying to turn Jamaica's freedom cry into a disposable trendy prepackaged product. Adhering to the roots of the music & the movement, third wave rude boys & rude girls are all about putting fascists & nazis down, whether it's the jack booted grade school drop out bringing violence to a show, or the new generation slaveowner in the guise of some branch of a corporate media enterprise. Remember your roots, & realize it's all about a little bit more than style.