this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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I admittedly know nothing about Ska, and music genres more generally, and whatever little searching I did upon reading this post have given me nothing that I can digest.
However, I've read a discussion about hate for ska coming from cultural appropriation and being liked by teenage boys. Can someone walk me through this?
Ska is simple, fun music that cares little for anything other than being fun, and is often gleefully immature. As such, teenage boys like it and pretentious music snobs love to look down their noses at it. Ska bands are aware of this fact and tend to lean into it, creating a self-aware and often self-parodying genre. It can be argued that it's not "good" music. But it is, without a doubt, fun and high energy music and a live ska show is a blast.
As far as cultural appropriation goes, nobody who matters cares, as all music is a collaborative effort that builds off of previous works. Music belongs to the world, and gatekeeping it as belonging to any particular culture is ridiculous. Ska in particular is a genre that loves to do covers, and often the sillier the better.
As a testament to the 'having fun' part, one of the most well known ska bands in recent time, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, have a member who is a dancer. He's been with them since their inception and tours with them. You'll see him on most live performances. His name is Ben Carr.
Thank you. To be quite honest, I've had a roommate once who loved reggae and ska, and even though I don't know the names of the songs nor the artists, I kinda like the entire vibe of it. Not that I'd want to listen to it all day though, but a bit of it in a day's listening makes my day a bit brighter, if that even makes sense.
I might have been guilty of wrongfully associating ska with reggae though, and to be fair, I couldn't even distinguish one from the other.
The best way I can describe it is that reggae is a walking beat, rocksteady is a jogging beat, and ska is a running beat.
(I like pineapple on pizza and ska)
Whoa! Dude, lol! Now I kinda want to hear reggae sped up to a ska-like BPM, and ska slowed down to a relaxing reggae-like BPM.
Listen to "Overcome (the Recapitulation)" by RX Bandits, may scratch that itch.
Wow, this is real good! Thanks for the recommend!
One of my favourite bands back in the day. They had an amazing evolution from a generic ska band to a prog type act over their fifteen year odd career.
Ska, as youngsters know it today, was reinvented by the 2-Tone movement in the UK (specifically Coventry) in the late 70s. The scene was overtly political and as @NuPNuA has stated was a deliberately multicultural movement, hence the name.
If you want to hear some original ska from Jamaica then have a look for songs by Prince Buster but beware you will find some historical attitudes.
A lot of the early ska-punk crossover acts in Britain had people of west Indian origin in them, so if anything it was a victory for multiculturalism rather than cultural appropriation. I've never heard a west Indian moan about white ska acts either.
If we want to get technical, all rock and roll, rap, ska, punk, etc are cultural appropriation. Most modern music comes from black cultural music genres first.