Ska Music

For my audience research I wanted to elaborate what Ska and Punk are as genres as ‘Smaller Than You’ fuses elements of both Ska and Punk into their music creating the genre of Ska-punk. The audience of Ska is quite hard to determine as it has many sub genres and routes. For research into ska/punk’s audience I started to read YouTube comments which give a good insight to the audience of the genre.

The video below is a mini music documentary on the 3rd wave of Ska music on Youtube and it’s comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AesId12OKsY

Mellowdeeska:
this is the YouTube name of the person who made the music video I looked at, their name reinforces there interest in Ska and taking a look at their account is a passion of theirs. The persons profile is quite ambiguous showing no real identity, and the only information which entails any depth is the user comments. People have been commenting this person which were interesting so I put them into categories:

Argumentative-(Trolling- starting arguments or being prejudice commenting on sites)
-“I'm sorry to inform you guys that there's a 4th wave of ska. If you say im full of it, you should really come to L.A. and check out what's happening in the underground scene here.”
-“u must b a homosexual “

Conversational/Social- (relating to political and social interstitial references or starting conversation through irrelevant topics)-
“btw check out, Band: ‘Punch The Clown’
Album: PUNCH THE CLOWN IS CAUGHT RED HANDED, Randomly bought it at a Music Trader for like a dollar or two....didn't even know who they were. That album changed my life! ! “

Entertainment-(saying how much they liked it)-
-“I love your history of Ska!”

Knowledge-(showing it of and being commanding)
-“You should consider Argentina in this "brief history" Ska is very popular in latin america thanks to all the amazaing bands that emerged in Argentina.”
-“I learned alot, thanks “


SKA:
Ska was a genre formed in the 1950’s in Jamaica and combines elements Caribbean mento, with American jazz and rhythm and blues. As traditional r and b and jump blues became more popular in the 60’s Jamaican artists started mixing their own genres, the style was of bars made up of four triplets and was characterised by a guitar chop on the offbeat- known as an upstroke or a skank. In Ska, the drum comes in on the 2nd and 4th beats, while the guitar emphasizes the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats. The upstroke sound can also be found in other Caribbean forms of music, such as mento and calypso. The first Ska recordings were created at facilities such as Studio One and WIRL Records in Kingston, Jamaica with producers such as Dodd, Reid, Prince Buster, and Edward Seaga. Some renowned ska artists are The Specials, The Might Mighty Bosstones, Spunge and Catch 22. There are 3 stages of the Ska movement:
- The original Jamaican scene
- Second wave, English '2 tone'
- Third wave ska, deeply associated with America.

2 TONE:
The genre of Ska leads too a sub genre of 2 Tone, which was a fusion of Jamaican Ska rhythms and melodies fused with punk rock aggressive lyrics and guitar chords. This became popular in the late 1970’s and had much faster tempo, this genre was named after 2 tone records the label founded by Jerry Dammers from The Specials. The 2 Tone movement promoted racial unity at a time when racial tensions were high in the UK. Riots in British cities were a feature during the summer that The Specials song "Ghost Town" was a hit, although this work was in a slower, Reggae beat. Most of the 2 Tone bands had multiracial line-ups, such as The Beat (known as English Beat in North America), The Specials, and The Selecter.[1] Although only on the 2 Tone label for one single, Madness were one of the most effective bands at bringing the 2 Tone genre into the mainstream.

SKA-PUNK:
This genre is a fusion of Ska and punk rock achieved greatly in the USA in the 1990’s. there are two sub genres influencing Ska punk, one which is the more punk style with faster tempo, guitar distortion and shouted vocals. The second is the more Ska influenced which features a more developed instrumentation and cleaner vocals and sound. This genre is a type of third wave ska and many of the bands played brass instruments (Like Smaller Than You) and have a much faster tempo.

SKATE-PUNK:
Although the genre of 'Smaller Than You' is Ska-punk, as infused skateboarding into our narrative we developed the subgenre of Ska which is skate-punk. This genre is popular amongst bands who enjoy both music and skateboarding, and we were influenced by renowned bands such as Blink 182 and Offspring who advocated the genre of skate-punk. This subgenre was created in America and is associated with American Ska, where skateboarding was growing in popularity and was a form of rebellion. This is extremely fundamental to our video as we wanted to predominantly target Ska-punk as well as Skate-punk.

SKANKING:
Skanking is a popular type of dance which is known well in this generation and is associated with Ska and Punk gigs. Many songs from Ska, reggae or punk have lyrics about skanking “Easy Skanking”-Bob Marley and Spunge’s “Skanking Song”. The dance is the type of dance in which ska and reggae lovers express themselves through, it is seen to either be relaxing when dancing to reggae and more upbeat with Ska. Nowadays the dance is associated with moshing whilst listening to hardcore punk, dubstep and grime music scenes. This moshing creates a skanking or moshing ‘pits’ which is popular at rock, Ska and reggae concerts nowadays.
The style of dance was originated in the 50’s in Jamaican dance halls where Ska music was played and was adopted by Skinheads and British mods. The term skanking also has been used to describe the style of rhythm of playing the guitar, especially in ska and reggae.