ska

[skah]

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.

ska

/ 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

Word History and Origins

Origin of ska¹

First recorded in 1960–65; of obscure origin

Word History and Origins

Origin of ska¹

C20: origin unknown

Example Sentences

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.

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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.”

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Mr. Cliff entered these contests early and began writing songs that were a mash of ska, rock-steady and calypso, globally popular then thanks to a string of hits by Harry Belafonte.

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A brass band cracks the calm, something between ska and Basque tradition, loud and local.

Read more on Salon

The breeze carries no aroma of red wine or rain-soaked ska bands.

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