A Celebration of Ska: Looking Back at 4 Decades of the Genre’s Best Songs

Some musical styles never die, they only recede to regroup and return again in a different guise. Ska is a great example of that. It developed as a uniquely Jamaican sort of folk music which drew on ’50s R&B and jump blues and blended with traditional mento and calypso sounds. In the ’60s it became wedded to the rough, street-wise “Rude Boy” culture in Kingston, and came over to Britain via the large West Indian immigrant culture, soon finding favor with the mods. 

When punk took off in the mid-’70s, Coventry keyboardist Jerry Dammers started The Specials and founded 2 Tone Records as ska’s answer to Motown, single-handedly helping steer the UK’s second-wave ska revival. A third wave crested in America during the ’90s, with acts such as Sublime, No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Ska’s distinctive sound comes from its literally off-beat approach. Traditional rock and blues accent the second and fourth beats, while ska focuses on the off-beat or upstroke, also known as the “skank,” an element taken from mento and calypso. Each musical measure is comprised of four triplet notes, with the accent on the third beat of each 4-triplet phrase, giving the sound its bounce. Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin explained the difference between R&B and ska rhythms as the first goes “chink-ka” and the latter goes “ka-chink.”

“A Message to You Rudy,” The Specials (1979)

The Specials formed in 1977 and two years later released their first single, “Gangsters,” a reworking of legendary ska singer Prince Buster’s 1964 Jamaican hit “Al Capone.” The band adopted the skinhead look and mod’s black/white, two-tone suit style, changing their name to The Specials. The single went to No. 6 on the UK Singles chart.

The single’s success led to an offer from Chrysalis Records, whom Dammers convinced to fund 15 singles a year through his new label and release at least 10. A weird clause allowed bands to leave after recording just one single, which Madness and The Beat both did. Madness’ debut One Step Beyond would arrive the same week in October 1979 that The Specials released their self-titled full-length debut, which Elvis Costello produced. 

The first single, “A Message To You Rudy,” arrived a week before the album though only after heated discussions with the label. It’s a cover of Dandy Livingstone’s 1967 track, and famed trombonist Rico Rodriguez, who played on the original, returns for The Specials’ cover. The single reached No. 10 on the singles chart. The song’s reference to “Rudy” is short for rude boy and it encourages this gang youth to change his destructive ways. It’s become a global anthem of anti-racism.

The Specials’ lead singer Terry Hall died of pancreatic cancer in December. He was 63.

“Party at Ground Zero,” Fishbone (1985)

Fishbone formed in 1979 among some African American kids bused from Los Angeles’ South Central neighborhood to a junior high school in the San Fernando Valley. It was there they met singer/saxophonist Angelo Moore. The band signed to Columbia when a member of R&B band The BusBoys spotted them. 

The members were united by their love of Parliament/Funkadelic, much like their neighbors, N.W.A. Later they discovered UK ska act The Selector, and even more ska music via genre aficionado Jason Mayall, son of John Mayall, leader of the Bluesbreakers. This single was their first release and appeared on their eponymous 1985 EP. 

The video was the brainchild of a Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline), who won a contest sponsored by Sony in partnership with the American Film Institute. His idea was to pay homage to the 1964 Vincent Price movie The Masque of the Red Death, which is based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story.

“Spiderwebs,” No Doubt (1995)

No Doubt were signed in 1990 by Interscope Records, which might have been having second thoughts about signing a ska band just as Nirvana was taking off. The label pulled back on tour support for their debut and chief songwriter Eric Stefani didn’t enjoy being saddled with a producer, as the label rejected much of their follow-up material. He soon left the band to work in animation and wound up on The Simpsons.

With Eric gone, sister Gwen Stefani started writing her own songs. One night she wrote “Spiderwebs” with bassist Tony Kanal, who she’d been dating for eight years before breaking up during the recording of the album Tragic Kingdom. The song is about a persistent caller that forces Stefani to screen her calls—like setting up spiderwebs—and is based on a phone stalker that would call in the middle of the night to recite poetry and play her songs on acoustic guitar.

The album was a slow grower that didn’t become a hit until a year after it was released. This track wasn’t even released as a commercial single because the label had already given up, but it just kept growing, reaching No. 18 on Billboard’s radio airplay charts, and charting in seven other countries (but oddly not the UK).

“Here’s to Life,” Streetlight Manifesto (2003)

Streetlight Manifesto is singer/guitarist Tomas Kalnoky’s second ska band. The Czech national’s parents emigrated to New Brunswick, New Jersey in his youth, where in high school in 1996 he started ska band Catch 22. Kalnoky left the band after the second album, underground sensation Keasbey Nights. Under duress from his parents he got a degree in graphic design from Savannah (Georgia) College of Art & Design, and then started Streetlight with some old New Jersey bandmates and buddies. 

Their debut album, Everything Goes Numb, features this track, an ode to Nobel Prize-winning authors Ernest Hemingway and French Albert Camus. The song explores their self-destructive impulses with which Kalnoky sympathizes, before singing, I draw the line at suicide / So here’s to life!

With Streetlight Manifesto, Kalnoky attempted more sophisticated subject matter. “We’ve all grown,” he told the Sacramento News at the time. “We all still love ska, by all means, but we’re older now, and we have older themes.” 

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