Bulletproof Brotherhood
By MILO MILES
Advocates of various roots-musics keep insisting that their favorite is going to become the next big inspiration in rock. Some say zydeco, some say bluegrass. But the one roots style that prevails again and again is ska, Jamaica's rugged, horn-driven precursor of reggae. One reason why is obvious. With its clipped beat, headlong arrangements, and innately rollicking textures, ska is about the only old sound tough enough to stand up to the testosterone-drenched scrutiny of today's punks. It's at the core of one of 1995's most rugged albums, Rancid's "Out Come the Wolves" (Epitaph). Moreover, ska, and related reggae, thrives in an underground with dozens upon dozens of bands across America, and may be the most widespread imported style next to rock itself in Mexico and South America. Many times more people listen to ska now than when it was first invented and popular in Kingston.
Despite Rancid's neon-dyed mohawks and the fact that they use just guitars and dabs of keyboard for lead instruments, ska is deeply associated with swaying horn sections and really short hair. At the end of the 1950s, Jamaican musicians broke away from the stifling dominance of imported American R&B when they evened out the beats and added extra bomp from indigenous Africa-derived drum patterns. Scorching soloists like trombonist Don Drummond of the preeminent Skatalites band took over from America's honking tenor saxophones even as the former boxer Prince Buster became a singing star by localizing his boasts of sexual and pugilistic prowess.
Ska's first lifetime was from 1961 to about 1965 or '66, but it influenced today's scene less than the music's remarkable rebirth years later. (Snappy sides from the original ska innovators can be heard on collections like the double-CD "Ska Bonanza" on HeartBeat records, also available as the separate collections "Go Ska Go" and "Streets of Ska.")
English skinheads in the early '70s embraced hard-stomping ska, though this was seen as just another taste crochet, like a weakness for honky-tonk country ballads. By the end of the decade, however, punk masters like The Clash had made reggae the sound of outsider integrity for alienated whites and spurred the rise of the so-called "2 Tone" bands. These neo-ska outfits, like the Specials and the Selector, celebrated the punch and fun of the bygone style as well as black and white racial solidarity in both lyrics and band membership. After a few years without crossover hits, the 2 Tone groups fizzled out, and while the punk-ska-reggae nexus never went away completely, it seemed moribund.
Next page: Now for something completely different: Venezuelan ska
