First Wave Ska
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The founding 1960s Jamaican wave that gives ska its "first wave" tag, distinguishing the original Kingston sound from the British 2-Tone second wave and the American third wave. Fast, horn-driven and swung, it pairs the chopped offbeat skank with walking basslines, boogie piano triplets and exuberant vocal-group harmony, cut live and mono for the sound systems. Rude-boy narratives, gospel-tinged singing and jazz solos coexist over the same relentless afterbeat. Everything is bright, brassy and built to make a lawn dance move.
History
First-wave ska ran from roughly 1960 to 1966, the years bracketed by Laurel Aitken's early boogie sides and the shift to rocksteady, and it was defined by Prince Buster's productions, the Skatalites' instrumentals and the vocal talent of the Wailers, Derrick Morgan, Toots and the Maytals and Desmond Dekker. Studio One, Treasure Isle and Federal cut the records; Blue Beat and later Trojan carried them to a Caribbean-British audience while Byron Lee's showband packaged ska for the 1964 New York World's Fair. When the second and third waves revived the form decades later they consciously reached back to these originators, making the first wave the canon every revivalist studies.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Guns of Navarone(1965) — The SkatalitesSpotifyYouTube
- Al Capone(1964) — Prince BusterSpotifyYouTube
- Simmer Down(1964) — The WailersSpotifyYouTube
- Boogie in My Bones(1959) — Laurel AitkenSpotifyYouTube
- Housewives' Choice(1962) — Derrick MorganSpotifyYouTube
- Bam Bam(1966) — Toots and the MaytalsSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Heather Augustyn, Ska: An Oral History (2010)
- Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King (2000)
- Laurence Cane-Honeysett, The Story of Trojan Records (2018)