It’s the early 90’s, and you’re getting ready for school. You eat breakfast, get dressed, strap on some aggressive inline skates, and grab your walkman. But what music is playing? Well, if you were the punk with checkers, then it’s ska. See, ska blew up just as fast as it had died. About three times to be precise. Once in the 60’s, once in the late 70’s and once in the 90’s.¹ But, why did it die again? If it was so good, to be revived so many times, compared to other genres, then why keep dying?

To answer that, we have to look at Jamaica, in the early 1960s.

See, ska has origins steeped deep in Jamaican culture. It would be the music where you would put on your best shoes and dance all night. You had hits like “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small or The Skatillite’s “Dynamite”, drawing from the 1950s Blues and Rhythm music playing in the Southern USA to make something themselves.¹ One theory about the origin of ska is that a Jamaican musician, PrinceBuster created it during a recording session for a record label. The guitar began emphasizing the second and fourth beats in the bar, giving rise to the new sound. The drums were taken from traditional Jamaican drumming and marching styles. To create the ska beat, Prince Buster essentially flipped the R&B shuffle beat, stressing the offbeats with the help of the guitar.² There was even rivalry between Sound Systems, music producers, and DJs, where groups of people, called Rude Boys who wore black suits, fedoras, and sunglasses, would often assert dominance by going to different dance halls and ripping the needles off of opposing DJs turntables.

Since Jamaica was a British territory during this time, Jamaicans often immigrated to Britain, in search of work, bringing their records and music tastes with them.¹ Soon, since those already living in Britain liked their music and Rude Boy style, ska had a 2nd wave, called Two-Tone, which infused aspects of punk into the music, such as the vocal style and power chords. You had bands like The Specials and Madness, promoting political messages of racial unity, when racial tensions were extremely high.¹ Soon, this became the point of ska. Unity. Soon, they adopted black and white checkers, to further push for this, since you have the Nazi Skinhead movement at the time.¹ Rude Boys and Nazi punks even got into fights, increasing tension. Soon, the Skinhead movement died, and ska spread to the U.S., and exploded again.

Now, since radio technologies had improved, those on the East Coast of America could hear the broadcasts from Jamaica, and soon ska had spread to the Americas.¹ However, it had been completely underground until May 29, 1989, when Operation Ivy released it’s only studio album, “Energy”, further blending punk and ska, getting rid of it’s clean nature, replacing it with distortion and fast tempos.² Soon, bands like The Refreshments, No Doubt, Less than Jake and Real Big Fish formed, and ska started to resurface.¹ Soon ska exploded once again. It was used in films, and MTV (When they actually had style and played music). You had shows almost every night. Then it crashed. Soon, it lost any edge. Bands like The Aquabats formed. It became extremely childish. It was ruined, and because at the time there was so much money in it, there were bands forming everywhere. It became extremely bloated. There was a show every night, killing it because it became TOO much.

Then it died.

However, now is a weird time for ska. New ska bands like The Interrupters started, and reached the top charts, with songs like “She’s Kerosene”.³ Publishers have been wondering if ska is going to resurface.

Now, you might wonder why I’ve been writing so much about ska, and here’s why. I’m going to ask you to do something. Pick it up. Pick up a trumpet. Pick up a guitar. Pick up some drumsticks. Pick up from where they left off. Start listening to their music. Maybe even form your own band, and live by the core of ska, unity. Don’t think you can’t be angry and have fun. And maybe, just maybe, we can go multi-tone. We could not only promote racial unity, by gender and sexuality unity as well.

Let’s go muli-tone.