My friend Nick sent me this video, showing ska dancing in Jamaica in the early 60s:
Nick and I had plans when we were undergrads to write the definitive book on ska. Not likely to happen, of course, but it is a transnational musical phenomenon just waiting for rhetorical study. Perhaps someday down the road I’ll return to it.
(oh, and for some historical context, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires were an uptown ska band that wasn’t that well respected—they were considered middle class or inauthentic—by many in the dance hall cultures of downtown Kingston.)
