ska

American  

[skah] / skɑ /

noun

1. a modern style of vocalized Jamaican popular music, which emerged in the 1950s as a blend of African-Jamaican folk music, calypso, and American rhythm and blues, notable for its shuffling, scratchlike tempo and jazzlike horn riffs on the offbeat.

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ska British  

/ skɑː /

noun

1. a type of West Indian pop music of the 1960s, accented on the second and fourth beats of a four-beat bar

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Etymology

Origin of ska

First recorded in 1960–65; of obscure origin

Example Sentences

I booked the indie, ska, emo, screamo and pop punk stuff.

From Los Angeles Times

With an interior covered with band stickers and T-shirts and a cramped, enclosed alley with walls covered in gum and graffiti, the Anaheim venue on Lincoln Avenue spent nearly 30 years as a staple for punk, ska, hardcore, emo and more that helped put OC on the map for generations of local music fans.

From Los Angeles Times

It also released excellent records by non-Latin artists such as Talking Heads side project Tom Tom Club, and Japan’s iconic Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra.

From Los Angeles Times

The result was a steady shift in the music-rich island from joyous ska and soulful rock-steady to reggae, a more brooding genre that addressed social and personal issues.

From The Wall Street Journal

As Mr. Cliff told the Journal in a 2013 interview about the title track: “The song for me was about social and artistic change. When I lived in the U.K., I recorded a lot of ska and rock-steady styles of Jamaican music. But people there weren’t accepting it. So I began using a faster reggae beat.”

From The Wall Street Journal