“Ska Boom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History” is a great new book from Marc Wasserman, ska enthusiast and bassist/lyricist of the first NJ ska band, Bigger Thomas. His heartfelt introduction and Stephen Shafer’s excellent opening history of ska in the U.S. sucked me right in, even before I got to the band testimonials. Shafer (“The Duff Guide to 2 Tone”) highlights the important contrast between the social setting in England that sparked the original 2 Tone scene with the harshly segregated U.S.:
“Thanks to the enduring legacy of slavery, the failure of reconstruction, implementation of the white supremacist Jim Crow laws, enduring and pervasive institutional and societal racism, and good old-fashioned discriminatory redlining, there were far too many places in America where white kids didn’t grow up next door to Black kids, didn’t go to the same schools, and often didn’t consume the same music. Contrast this with the many white, working class kids in the UK growing up in the same neighborhoods with the Black Jamaican working class sons and daughters of the Windrush generation. . . “
He also marks the importance of these three seminal albums, aside from the obviously huge influence of the 2 Tone bands from the UK: The Untouchables’ “Wild Child,” Fishbone’s self-titled record and The Toasters’ self-titled.
After that, the book reaches back to 1973 with The Shakers in Oakland, who were most likely the first reggae band in the U.S., and who often had to explain what reggae was to most people. Started by Ron Rhoades after he first heard Johnny Nash and Desmond Dekker and began digging in to Jamaican music, The Shakers follow a pattern here of one person discovering ska and reggae, and then recruiting other musicians. People that heard them would tell them their rhythm was off or even backwards, because they just had no concept of the music at all. Apparently, Joni Mitchell heard them in the studio and even asked, “What is it?” Not to mention the fact that their producer at Elektra didn’t understand them at all and made ridiculous suggestions like rewriting Toots & The Maytals’ “Got To Feel It” before they covered it, because he thought listeners would find the song structure confusing.
Businesses shaped like cameras, tamales, coffee pots, a stockinged leg, animals, hats, and more emerged in the 1920s through the 1940s as a quintessentially Los Angeles art form, with a novel charm that attracted customers and gawkers alike.
