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Like other major music genres, ska reflects, reveals, and reacts to
the genesis and migration from its Afro-Caribbean roots and
colonial origins to the shores of England and back across the
Atlantic to the United States. Without ska music, there would be no
reggae or Bob Marley, no British punk and pop blends, no American
soundtrack to its various subcultures. In Ska: The Rhythm of
Liberation, Heather Augustyn examines how ska music first emerged
in Jamaica as a fusion of popular, traditional, and even classical
musical forms. As a genre, it was a connection to Africa, a means
of expression and protest, and a respite from the struggles of
colonization and grinding poverty. Ska would later travel with West
Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, where British youth
embraced the music, blending it with punk and pop and working its
origins as a music of protest and escape into their present lives.
The fervor of the music matched the energy of the streets as
racism, poverty, and violence ran rampant. But ska called for
brotherhood and unity. As series editor and pop music scholar Scott
Calhoun notes: "Like a cultural barometer, the rise of ska
indicates when and where social, political, and economic
institutions disappoint their people and push them to re-invent the
process for making meaning out of life. When a people or group
embark on this process, it becomes even more necessary to embrace
expressive, liberating forms of art for help during the struggle.
In its history as a music of freedom, ska has itself flowed freely
to wherever people are celebrating the rhythms and sounds of hope."
Ska: The Rhythm Liberation should appeal to fans and scholars
alike-indeed, any enthusiast of popular music and Caribbean,
American, and British history seeking to understand the fascinating
relationship between indigenous popular music and cultural and
political history. Devotees of reggae, jazz, pop, Latin music, hip
hop, rock, techno, dance, and world beat will find their
appreciation of this remarkable genre deepened by this survey of
the origins and spread of ska.
Before Bob Marley brought reggae to the world, before Jimmy Cliff
and Peter Tosh, before thousands of musicians played a Jamaican
rhythm, there were the men and women who created ska music, a blend
of jazz, American rhythm and blues, and the indigenous music of the
Caribbean. This book tells the story of ska music and its
development from Jamaica to England, where the music took on a
distinctively different tone, and finally to the rest of the world.
Through the words of over 30 of legendary artists, gleaned from
over a decade of interviews, the story of ska music is finally told
by those who were there.
As the ubiquitous Jamaican musician Bob Marley once famously sang,
"half the story has never been told." This rings particularly true
for the little-known women in Jamaican music who comprise
significantly less than half of the Caribbean nation's musical
landscape. This book covers the female contribution to Jamaican
music and its subgenres through dozens of interviews with
vocalists, instrumentalists, bandleaders, producers, deejays and
supporters of the arts. Relegated to marginalized spaces, these
pioneering women fought for their claim to the spotlight amid
oppressive conditions to help create and shape Jamaica's musical
heritage.
This is a comprehensive biography of a brilliant musician and his
lover who forever shaped the course of ska, reggae, and popular
music worldwide despite poverty, class separation, mental illness,
racial politics, exploitation, and sexism that resulted in murder.
Through the words of Don Drummond's childhood friends, classmates,
musicians, medical staff, legal counsel, and teachers, comes a
first-hand story of his ""unusual mind."" They recall the early
days in the recording studio, playing the instrumental backup for
Bob Marley and others, and the nights in the Rasta camps where
musicians burned the midnight oil and more. They roam the halls of
the primitive and haunting mental hospitals; remember the gyrations
of his lover, Margarita, the Rumba Queen, as she tantalised
audiences at Club Havana; tell what happened that tragic night when
Drummond stabbed Margarita four times; reveal details of the trial
(delayed more than a year as Drummond was ruled mentally unfit) and
offer insights into the ways that Drummond likely died in the
asylum at age 35.
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