2-Tone Ska
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The British late-1970s revival that welded Jamaican ska and rocksteady to punk energy and new-wave attitude: faster and harder-edged than the originals, with buzzsaw guitar chopping the offbeat, a punchy horn section, driving drums and shouted, socially barbed vocals. Racially integrated line-ups played the music in monochrome mod suits and pork-pie hats, the black-and-white "2 Tone" imagery mirroring the multiracial bands. Themes ran to unemployment, racism, nightlife and Thatcher-era Britain, delivered with wit and urgency. It is ska played with the tension and volume of the punk clubs that birthed it.
History
Sparked in Coventry in 1979 when Jerry Dammers founded the 2 Tone label and released the Specials, the movement fused first-wave ska with punk's DIY charge and swept the UK charts within a year, its roster and fellow travellers including Madness, the Selecter, the Beat, Bad Manners and the Bodysnatchers. Trojan-schooled players like trombonist Rico Rodriguez lent authenticity while the bands' anti-racist stance answered the era's National Front tensions. The label burned brightly and briefly, effectively spent by 1981's apocalyptic "Ghost Town," but it reintroduced ska to a global audience, launched Madness and the Beat as pop institutions and directly inspired the American third-wave ska-punk explosion of the 1990s.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- George Marshall, The Two Tone Story (1990)
- Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down (2016)
- Steve Barrow & Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae (2004)