Chaos, Freelance WriterThe origins of the Jamaican genre of music, ska, have become somewhat blurred over the years, and the space is not available on these pages to fully explore such at the moment.
Suffice it to say that its creation has been credited to many, from Ernie Ranglin, to Clement 'Sir Coxsone Dodd' to Prince Buster.
As outlined at a symposium in honour of Sir Coxsone Dodd earlier this year, Ska came about with the birth of the sound system in Jamaica, when selectors began to move away from the American jazz and R&B songs which were staples then and began experimenting with other genres, including native mento rhythms, mixing and matching to come up with ska, which preceded rocksteady, reggae and now dancehall.
Forty years ago, many of the songs were created in Dodd's Studio One and was pioneered by acts such The Wailers (who played ska before reggae - Simmer Down is actually regarded as ska ), Desmond Dekker, Toots and the Maytals, Prince Buster, Laurel Aitken and of course, the Skatalites. Elements of jazz, R&B, calypso, rock, swing and big-band were all experimented with to create ska.
Originally a genre for the masses of 'Downtown', in other words the 'have-nots' as opposed to the 'haves', it was a mode of expression which railed against oppression, poverty and racial tension. Ska moved from 'Back A Wall' when, especially, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires took it and 'softened' it enough to become palatable to uptown folk. Prior to this however, the genre became widely popular among the so-called 'lower classes' of Jamaica, making stars of acts such as Desmond Dekker, Prince Buster and The Skatalites among others and further cementing the reputation of Sir Coxsone Dodd as the island's premier record producer.
Ska was introduced to the international scene in the 1960s by Jamaica Labour Party leader Edward Seaga, then Minister of Development and Welfare, who promoted overseas tours of Jamaican artistes and paved the way for the international prominence of reggae. Interestingly, the initial move in this was by taking the middle-class Byron Lee and the Dragonaires to the 1964 World's Fair in New York, rather than The Skatalites, Jamaica's most popular and creative band at the time, with the possible exception of The Wailers.
One thing that has always characterised ska is the use of live instruments, especially horns, the guitar and drums. Live bands are now a rarity in today's dancehall-oriented music scene, which leads us to David Madden and the Cyber-Tix band and their new concept Cyber-Ska. While ska has remained alive and well in other parts of the world, with bands such as No Doubt, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Less Than and Fishbone all having liberally borrowed from the genre. However, here in the land of its birth, having given way first to rocksteady, reggae then dancehall, it is practically non-existent. This David Madden wants to change.
A man who has played and recorded with notables such as Ernie Ranglin and Dean Fraser, who recorded with Sir Coxsone Dodd, he was there for the genesis of the art form and he would like to see its resurrection and evolution. Hence the concept of Cyber-Ska.
When The Sunday Gleaner spoke with him recently, he had this to say. "Ska was done about 40 years ago in Jamaica. I had felt that if you just try to do it again, it wouldn't happen again - we have a lot of work to do. In the long run of it all, what we pass off on the world scene, from a personal stance, there is no music. Ska was the first pop music in Jamaica and it was independent. People were creating individually and playing and in the process created ska. Then another set of people created rocksteady and another set created reggae. Technology created dancehall and if we equate it to a woman having a baby, we can equate it to a barren baby because dancehall can't reach anywhere because there is no human element to take it anywhere.
"Fifty years down the road, it's going to be the same way, a different guy singing a different song on a different 'riddim', but the same thing.
"I don't call what I do ska, because it would be like 40 years ago, I call what I do 'cyber-ska' - it is evolving. What I mean is that we have a lot of work to do. I'm working towards getting an audience and getting young people involved. These young people need to see a window of hope and when they get involved, they might take the concept even further, it might not even be cyber-ska, just like how ska changed to rocksteady.
"We don't really have a product, a commodity to sell the world, what makes us say we do is because of what we have from the '60s and '70s. There are other Bob Marleys, Jimmy Cliffs and Don Drummonds out there, but they will never come to the fore with this static dancehall.
"We don't get any of the biggest acts doing over dancehall. Barbra Streisand did over Bob Marley's Guava Jelly, the Rolling Stones covered Cherry Oh Baby. These were the young big acts of the time and they were loving the reggae and coming to Jamaica and recording. That's not happening anymore.
"It's not Janet Jackson come to Beenie Man and say I want to do... When those young acts came it's because they heard something and they wanted to record it.
"I'm doing my little part to create a musical product that can be recognised internationally again," he said.
