Hear Me Out: Third-wave ska was an insult to the genre
Characterised by heavy bass lines and off-beat rhythms, ska music has been popular with audiences worldwide since its humble beginnings in the recording studios of Jamaica in the 1950s. Its long and illustrious legacy is still felt today, and rightly so. However, the rise in prominence of third-wave ska, particularly American third-wave bands, insult that legacy by presenting the beat as some kind of novelty music.
Culturally, ska is incredibly important to the country of Jamaica. Predating reggae, ska was created after sound systems began to run out of American R&B records to play. Co-opting that beloved sound but with a distinctly Caribbean rhythm and attitude, ska music became the definitive cacophony of the island in the late 1950s. Soundtracking Jamaica’s independence from Britain in 1962, the cultural importance of the genre cannot be overstated. However, in addition to its mother country, ska also has a lot to answer for in the UK.
As a result of the post-war employment drive, many people from Jamaica and the Caribbean relocated to the UK in order to work. One of the cultural effects of this immigration was that white working-class areas of major cities like London, Birmingham, and Coventry now housed a notable population of Black people, too. Although this was quickly used by right-wing organisations and politicians to foster racist views, Britain’s youth found unity in a shared love for ska music. The early skinhead subculture was born from a marrying of white British working-class culture and the invigorating Jamaican import.
In that sense, at least in the UK, ska has always been an inherently political genre of music. During the 1970s, as the right-wing grew in popularity and hate groups like the National Front were on the rise, ska was seen as a vehicle to unify Britain’s youth under a common love of music. So, when the 2 Tone movement kicked off in the midlands towards the end of the decade, it was a joyous celebration. Mixing punk rock with the classic Caribbean sound, bands like The Specials or The Selecter were utilising this blend in order to strive for racial unity, not just in terms of musicology but personnel too; every band on the 2 Tone label featured a mixed-race lineup aside from Madness.
The 2 Tone movement did not last particularly long, and the skinhead subculture was hijacked by far-right boneheads who tended to prefer ‘Oi!’ music to sounds inspired by the likes of Prince Buster or Marcia Griffiths. Still, the cultural legacy of ska remained. For a period, the word ‘ska’ would conjure up images of Jamaican independence, Studio One, the unifying power of 2 Tone or maybe even the cultural importance of the skinhead subculture. Now, though, the word drums up an image of wacky Americans in silly outfits holding trumpets.
Third-wave ska, in terms of sound, has more in common with simple 1980s US punk rock than Jamaica’s sound systems in the ’50s. Although the genre had witnessed some form of punk rock reimagining during the 2 Tone era, those groups tended to pay much of their dues to the original artists, even recruiting people like Rico to tour with them.
In addition to this, given the mixed-race nature of those bands – many of the members had Jamaican roots themselves – giving them a cultural claim to the music. Third-wave ska, on the other hand, was popularised by predominantly white middle-class American artists who seemed to boil down the intense cultural and political importance of a defiant brand of pop to simply being an off-beat guitar rhythm and a funny dance.
The effects of this musical colonialism are that, particularly for people who grew up in the 1990s when bands like Reel Big Fish or The Aquabats were reaching the peak of their mainstream appeal, the image of ska music has been indefinitely altered for the worse. Granted, it would be foolish to write off the entire genre of third-wave ska, there are some groups who produced some pretty good tunes and some that made more of an effort to pay tribute to its history. Some bands, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, for example, are closer to the lineage of 2 Tone than many third-wave bands who followed. But on the whole, there is an ignorance that doesn’t pertain to innocent bliss, but rather bleaches the past.
At best, many of the later groups were more akin to pop punk; at worst, many of them were more like novelty bands. The Aquabats, for instance, act as a kind of ska-punk Wiggles. These bands serve their purpose as pseudo-punk without substance, giving audiences something they can easily dance to, but as far as traditional ska music goes, they are an absolute insult to the genre’s history and legacy, not because it was ever devoid of fun, but because there was a mammoth subtext behind it – one that’s been wilfully eroded.
