Ska represents the birth of modern popular Jamaican music, and it does so with the accent on ‘Jamaican’. While this raucous, uptempo, good-times music may have had its roots in American big-band jazz and R&B, it was conceived as a celebration of Jamaican independence. Ska is the link between the virtuoso playing of Kingston’s sophisticated nightclub musicians ...
Across the centuries and around the globe, many different forms of music have enjoyed mass appeal for a limited period of time. None, however, have been able to match the widespread influence of the popular music that erupted in America during the mid-1950s and, by the second half of the decade, was exerting its grip over ...
sound system crowds were responsible for the sound men taking reggae down new avenues: Dodd and Buster switched from playing R&B records to something more indigenous and came up with ska and records like ‘Easy Snappin’’ and ‘Oh Carolina’. Duke Reid saw the potential in having instrumental versions of tunes and a deejay ‘toasting’ records (where the deejay talks in rhyme ...
He began playing with John Stevens’s Freebop band and by the mid-1980s had formed the Jazz Warriors, an adventurous big band that combined elements of reggae, calypso and ska with jazz. Pine later formed a sax quartet called the Saxophone Posse and made his recording debut as a leader with 1986’s Journey To The Urge Within on Island Records. ...
(Vocals, b. 1969) After finding success with the ska-punk/balladry of band No Doubt, Californian Stefani went out on her own to attempt a solo career away from the genre. After a 2001 smash single with Eve, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, she worked with dance and hip hop producers such as Dr. Dre and the ever-popular Neptunes, ...
Daughter of comedy actor Keith Allen, Lily has gone on to surpass her father’s success with two platinum-selling albums in the Noughties. Allen blends British pop with elements of ska and R&B. That, coupled with acerbic observational lyrics brought her to prominence with her 2006 debut Alright, Still and UK chart-topping single ‘Smile’. The Londoner’s second album It’s ...
1760–1842, Italian The Italian composer Luigi Cherubini studied in Florence, Bologna and Milan, first writing church music, and then, in 1779, producing his first operas. By 1787, when he settled in Paris, he had written 13 operas, but nothing, as yet, that was innovatory. This changed when his Démophon (1788) ...
Lee Thompson (saxophone) – only managed one US hit, 1983’s ‘Our House’, but inspired the American ska-punkers of the 1990s. 1979’s One Step Beyond was a cornerstone of the ska revival, but Madness soon developed a broader pop-oriented sensibility. An influence on the likes of Blur and Supergrass, their use of videos was trailblazing. Highlights include ‘Embarrassment’ (1979), ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1987–present) Gwen Stefani (vocals), Tom Dumont (guitar), Tony Kanal (bass) and Adrian Young (drums) began life as a ska/punk band from California. Their eponymous debut album (1992) went against the grain of grunge and they were dropped by their label. Success followed after their self-financed Tragic Kingdom (1995) crashed into US charts on the back of the ‘Just ...
Sixties Tosh met Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, and the trio began harmonizing and playing guitars together. In 1962 they formed the Wailing Wailers. The band recorded several successful ska singles before splitting in late 1965. After immersion in the Rastafari movement, the original trio reunited and renamed the group the Wailers. The band left ska behind, and ...
(Pi’-otr Il’-yech Chi’-kôf-ska) 1840–93 Russian composer Few composers from the second half of the nineteenth century have achieved as great a popularity as Tchaikovsky. For many listeners, the secret lies in his special gift for broad, arching melodies and his tendency towards agonized self-expression, rooted in a series of crises in his personal life, which fall easy prey ...
by Stony Plain in 2000 and toured again for the last two years of his life. The idiosyncratic, loping rhythms of Gordon’s music was influential on the development of ska and reggae music in Jamaica. Styles & Forms | Fifties | Jazz & Blues Personalities | Guitar Slim | Fifties | Jazz & Blues ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1985–2003) This Boston band was instrumental in mixing together ska and punk with metal stylings for a wider American audience. Tim Bridewell (vocals), Dicky Barrett (vocals), Nate Albert (guitar), Joe Gittleman (bass), Josh Dalsimer (drums), Tom ‘Johnny Vegas’ Burton (saxophone) was a classic line-up that enjoyed cult success with albums like Don’t Know How To Party (1993) and ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1978–81, 2009) As frontrunners of the ska revival, this superb Coventry band released the genre’s finest single, ‘Ghost Town’ (1981), on their own 2Tone label. Terry Hall and Neville Staples (both vocals), Lynval Golding and Roddy Radiation (both guitar), Jerry Dammers (keyboards), Horace ‘Gentleman’ Panter (bass) and John Bradbury (drums) also had hits with ‘Rat ...
2-Tone had released Top 10 singles by all the main players in the 2-Tone wave. North London septet Madness’s ‘The Prince’ was, like ‘Gangsters’, a tribute to the Jamaican ska legend Prince Buster, but with the punk attack replaced by a cheeky, cheery, but occasionally wistful, cockney music-hall attitude. Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson and company soon left ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.