Word: ska
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Musical miscegenation is the order of the day. Salsa sleeping with ska, rock 'n' roll and hip-hop giving birth to rock-hop. We live in an age of diversifying demographics and turntable mixing, and the result is often beautifully blurred music. Right now, there's no one better at putting out albums that blend the sounds of the times than the New York City-based nonprofit Red Hot Organization. Over the past nine years, Red Hot, working with various record labels, has produced a dozen albums, each one featuring some sly subgenre mix, with all net profits going...
...Slackers from Hellcat Records, a label synonymous with new up-and-coming ska bands, have recently followed up their first two records, Better Late than Never and Redlight, with The Question. If you are already a fan of theirs, you will not be disappointed. Victor Ruggiero still leads The Slackers with his sexy, scratchy voice, and they still pump out that strong reggae-ska-calypso-swing beat. The Question, being their third record since 1990, exhibits a progression towards integrating new diverse sounds, influenced by jazz, mambo, R&B and soul, into their traditional style. If you are somewhat familiar...
...even in violence. Hip-hop, much as the blues and jazz did in past eras, has compelled young people of all races to search for excitement, artistic fulfillment and even a sense of identity by exploring the black underclass. "And I know because of [rapper] KRS-1," the white ska-rap singer Bradley Nowell of Sublime once sang in tribute to rap. Hip-hop has forced advertisers, filmmakers and writers to adopt "street" signifiers like cornrows and terms like player hater. Invisibility has been a long-standing metaphor for the status of blacks in America...
...HEPCAT Right on Time (Hellcat) This nine-member band, based in Los Angeles, plays old-school ska with sweet vocals and warm, gentle horns. The songs, many of them genial ballads and jazzy instrumentals, breeze by, carefree but never insubstantial. This is an album that makes you dream of the Caribbean, or of dancing under starlight, or perhaps both...
...there is some variation on the general musical theme. The beginning of "Big Star" sounds oddly like Paul Simon, and parts of "Everything Is Cool" are vaguely death-metalish. But for the most part, Reel Big Fish stick to kinds of rhythms and melodies generally associated with ska, and they perform well in their chosen style...