History of Pop Music
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History of Rock Music
TM, ®, Copyright © 2002 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.
Jamaica: the mentoTM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
The first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951 and recorded "mento" music, a fusion of European and African folk dance music. The island was awash in rhythm'n'blues records imported by the so called "sound systems", eccentric traveling dance-halls run by no less eccentric disc-jockeys such as Clement Dodd (the "Downbeat") and Duke Reid (the "Trojan"). The poor people of the Jamaican ghettos, who could not afford to hire a band for their parties, had to content themselves with these "sound systems". The "selectors", the Jamaican disc-jockeys who operated those sound systems, became the real entertainers. The selector would spin the records and would "toast" over them. The art of "toasting", that usually consisted in rhyming vocal patterns and soon evolved in social commentary, became as important as the music that was being played.
In 1954 Ken Khouri started Jamaica's first record label, "Federal Records". He inspired Reid and Dodd, who began to record local artists for their sound system. Towards the end of the 1950s, amateurs began to form bands that played Caribbean music and New Orleans' rhythm'n'blues, besides the local mento. This led to the "bluebeat" groups, which basically were Jamaica's version of the New Orleans sound. They usually featured saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, drums and bass.
Soon the bass became the dominant instrument, and the sound evolved
into the "ska". The "ska" beat had actually been invented by
Roscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, with No More Doggin' (1951).
Ska songs boasted an upbeat tempo, a horn section, Afro-American vocal
harmonies, jazzy riffs and staccato guitar notes.
(See The Age of Revivals)
Theophilus Beckford cut the first "ska" record, Easy Snapping, in 1959, but Prince Buster (Cecil Campbell), owner of the sound system "Voice of the People", was the one who, around 1961, defined ska's somatic traits once and forever (he and his guitarist Jah Jerry).
The Wailers, featuring the young Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, slowed down the beat in Simmer Down (1963). Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964) was the first worldwide ska hit. The charismatic leaders of the ska movement were the Skatalites, a group of veteran ex-jazzmen led by saxophonist Tommy McCook and featuring virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist Rolando Alphonso, that formally existed only between 1964 and 1965 (Ball O' Fire, 1965; Phoenix City, 1966; the instrumental Guns Of Navarone, 1967), but ska's star was Desmond Dekker (Dacres), whose Israelites (1968) launched the even faster "poppa-top", and whose 007 Shanty Town (1967) and Rude Boy Train fueled the mythology of the "rude boy". Ska music was relatively serene and optimist, a natural soundtrack to that age of peace and wealth, somewhat akin to the music of the "swinging London".
Jamaica had become an independent country in 1962, but social problems
During the mid Sixties, ska music evolved into "rock steady", a languid
style, named after Alton Ellis' hit Rock Steady (1966),
that emphasized sociopolitical themes, adopted electric instruments,
replaced the horns with the guitars, and promoted the bass to lead
instrument (virtually obliterating the drums).
In other words, ska mutated under the influence of
soul music. Rock steady was identified with the crowd of young delinquents
(the "rude boys")
who mimicked the British "mods" and the American "punks".
Its generational anthems were
Judge Dread (1967) by Prince Buster,
John Holt's The Tide Is High (1966) by the Paragons,
Rivers Of Babylon (1969) by the Melodians.
The music took the back seat to the vocal harmonies. This helped bring about
the supremacy of vocal groups: Wailers, Paragons, Maytals (the new name of
the Vikings of the ska hit Halleluja, 1963), Pioneers,
Melodians, Heptones, etc.
The word "reggae" was coined around 1960 in Jamaica