What is Ska Music?

As the name suggests, Ska is basically a genre of music that has a unique style of its own. Throughout history, there have been many genres of music. However, not all of them have stayed. Societal trends and the general taste in music buried some genres and introduced new music genres. This battle of staying relevant has been going on for a long time and there are only a handful of genres that have remained relevant and strong, like ska music.

Today, ska music has become a unique niche genre in the world of music. Ska music initially emerged from the island of Jamaica from where it started to get recognition from other parts of the world as well. Ska music not only has a rich cultural and evolutionary history, but it has also enjoyed many years of success on the global music charts.

To truly understand the essence of ska music, we first need to discuss how the music evolved and changed through time. Then, we will go through a bunch of globally acclaimed hallmarks of ska music. To understand the genre better, we will compare it with Rocksteady and Reggae music as well. Finally, we will discuss modern ska music.

Evolutionary Changes in Ska Music

Ska music essentially came from the streets of Jamaica, part of the North American continent. American R&B was a major influence on this genre. It wouldn't be wrong to say that ska music is essentially a blend of R&B and traditional Jamaican music. However, instead of being a wonky mixture of two distinct styles of music, ska quickly evolved into a unique genre brimmed with explosive energy, extraordinary instrumentals, and an incredible brass section.

In its history, Ska music has gone through many changes making it distinguished. The collective changes in ska music can be categorized into three distinct waves based on the time period.

The First Wave: Jamaican Originality

After the second world war, the global tension started to dissipate, particularly in the United States. Popular radio stations in New Orleans and Miami began to expand their reach. In this way, American music made its way into Jamaica's street music culture. Jamaicans were now able to listen to music from the US, especially R&B at that time. One of the hottest songs on the country's music charts was "Ain't That A Shame" by Fat Domino, who was a blues music artist.

Due to the rising popularity of R&B in Jamaica, many artists and producers tried to recreate the uniqueness and capture the essence of the genre. This led to the creation of a new version of R&B which included aspects from traditional Jamaican music as well. For example, elements from Jamaican folk music (mento) and aspects from Caribbean music (calypso).

However, this new type of music originating from Jamaica was very different from traditional American R&B. The similarities to R&B were very subtle and often, indiscernible. This was the birth of ska music.

Fast-forward to the early 60s, Ska music dominated the streets of Jamaica becoming the most popular genre of music in the country. Many local and recognized artists along with producers were jumping on ska's hype train. The music industry was constantly releasing Ska music because of how much people enjoyed it. Ska music had become common in street festivals and parties.

The Second Wave: 2Tone Ska Music

The second wave of evolution in Ska music was when there was an insurgence of Jamaican immigrants in Britain. As a result, ska music rose to popularity once again in the 70s. This era of popularity for ska music is historically termed as "2-Tone".

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Quite ironically, there are two reasons as to why this era of ska's popularity is called "2 Tone". Firstly, the punk rock band "The Specials", led by Jerry Dammers, adopted ska music and fused some elements of punk rock music into it. In this way, they managed to present a new form of ska music with a high tempo and more energetic than when it first originated in Jamaica.Dammers, responsible for the revival and popularity of ska, owned "2 Tone" records. Thus, this era of ska music evolution was named "2 Tone ska music".

The second reason was that the band was racially diverse. This was an incredibly rare sight for the time. Due to their racial background, the band used ska music to address and bring light to the issue of racism. 2 Tone records was responsible for bringing Ska music to the country of United Kingdom, starting the journey of ska's global recognition.

Due to the rising popularity of ska music in the UK, many artists and groups inspired by the band started exploring this genre as well. Some of the most notable bands in this time were;

• Madness
• The Selecter
• Bad Manners
• The Bodysnatchers

The British record label's influence wasn't restricted to Britain alone. On the contrary, ska music even gained recognition in Canada. "The Villians", a Canadian band, were inspired by the artistic style of the music produced by 2 Tone. This band embraced ska music and later on, became one of the most popular ska music bands in the entire country.

The Third Wave: To Where it All Started

2 Tone records quickly became a global phenomenon. Many bands in America started to recognize the uniqueness of Ska music and started adopting the style of ska music into their songs. One of the most notable bands to do this was the punk rock bands. This led to the fusion of two distinct genres, ska, and punk rock, resulting in the evolution of ska music into ska-punk music.

The evolution of ska music into its third wave of popularity made it vastly different from the style in which it originally came about. In other words, Jamaican ska music and American punk-Ska music had undergone drastic changes. The most notable change was that third-wave ska music ditched the traditional style of Jamaican folk music in favor of strong guitar riffs and punchy elements in punk rock music.

In the 90s, punk bands became immensely popular and quickly rose to stardom in the music industry. Talented bands and artists such as;

• No Doubt
• Sublime
• Reel Big Fish
• The Mighty MightyBosstones

Gained widespread popularity and often appeared on the country's billboard top 200s list. Moreover, many of the playlists that feature modern ska music are largely from these bands.

"Less Than Jake" was a band that produced ska-punk music influenced by the third wave of the genre's popularity. Chris DeMakes of this band gave a really incredible interview detailing how the band created a unique version of Ska music with influence from punk and pop music.

Chris not only discusses the unique elements of their punk-pop version of ska music but also sheds light on the music trends of the 90s. Music trends are very important for the rise and fall of a genre. At that time, the music trends in America paved the way for the rise of ska music in the country's music industry. Give their song "All My Best Friends Are Metalheads" a listen if you want to see what punk-pop ska music is all about.

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Hallmarks of Ska Music

Even though ska music is incredibly diverse and has been influenced by many other genres since its birth, it still features unique rhythms and instrumentation. The instrumentals used in ska music are pretty generic such as bass, drums, guitars, electronic keyboards, etc. However, modern ska music now features horns such as trumpets and trombones in addition to the popular instrumentals.

The Ska Upstroke

A signature characteristic of ska music is the rebounding rhythm. To get this rhythm, ska artists keep the bars in 4/4 time signatures and focus on the "off" beats. The resulting rhythm is known as the 'ska upstroke'. The main instrumental involved to produce this rhythm is the guitar.

A guitarist can perform this upstroke by highlighting the 2nd and 4th beat in the bar and following it up with swift strum. These series of actions are represented on a musical sheet as follows;

To pick up the tempo, ska-punk guitarists change the rhythm by introducing ending notes to the beats. In other words, a normal tempo beat would be performed as 1, 2, 3, and 4. However, a high-tempo beat in ska would be performed as "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" with each "and" being a distinct note. The time signature of the bar remains the same but the number of notes increases, thus increasing the tempo of the bar.

The ska upstroke can be performed on other stringed instrumentals as well, such as the Ukelele.

The Vocals

When Ska music initially originated in Jamaica, it featured R&B and Jamaican folk style vocals. In other words, early ska music had a soothing and melodic vocal style. Later, artists introduced the use of hooks, chants, and shouts as vocals in the music as well.

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In the era of 2 Tone ska music, the melodic vocals were injected with more energy than before.

In the third wave, ska music was heavily influenced by pop and punk rock music. Thus, different artists either adopted a jolly vocal style or a grim vocal style depending on the song's theme. However, one factor remained the same, i.e, the vocalists always delivered the verses quickly with shouts mixed in the layers of the song.

The Brass

Horned instrumentals are a defining characteristic of ska music. The uniqueness comes from the way artists follow up these instrumentals, either with vocal lyrics or guitar solos.

When ska initially came into being as a separate genre, the brass persisted as a defining characteristic of the music's tune. Artists would usually do a smooth freestyle over the instrumentals or perform stringed upstrokes.

In the second wave, 2 Tone records went for a more passive participation when including the brass. However, in the third wave, bands emphasized the horned instrumentals a lot more. An example of the third wave of ska music's brass emphasis is "Take On Me" by Reel Big Fish.

The Bass

Another musical hallmark of ska music is a progressing bass. This bass helps in supporting the high energy and especially the high tempo of third-wave ska music.

A Comparison Between Ska, Reggae and Rocksteady Music

There's no doubt that ska music is unique and has its own identity. However, there are certain features from other genres (particularly Jamaican) that have made their way into ska music.

Ska music directly influenced the emergence of Reggae and Rocksteady music.

The Rocksteady music genre is essentially the next generation of ska music and became popular at the end of the 60s. This was right around the time that the hype for ska music was dying. The rhythm of the two genres is incredibly similar. In fact, if you take a beat from a ska song and lower the beats per minute to 80, then you'll end up with a Rocksteady beat.

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The main difference between ska music and rocksteady music is the speed at which the beats are played. While ska music has a high-tempo beat making it more energetic, Rocksteady music has a comparatively slow beat making it feel more calm and relaxing.

Later on, Rocksteady music was taken over by Reggae music in Jamaica. Rocksteady and Reggae are similar to each other in the aspect that both have a slow beat. Unlike ska, Reggae features less brass and leans towards rock instrumentals more.

Modern Ska Music

After three distinct revivals following an incredible explosion in popularity each time, Ska music is still a popular genre even today. The third wave of ska music evolution led to the coming up of many prominent ska-punk bands. These bands not only released amazing music in their prime, but many of them are still going strong to this day. Bands like Reel Big Fish, Rancid, and Mighty MightyBosstones are keeping the ska music culture strong and explosive.

From what history has taught us, if ska music is ever about to fall off, it'll eventually rise up with an explosive comeback.

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