Ska Jazz

3 profiles tagged Ska Jazz, A-Z.

Ska itself emerged in Jamaica in the late 1950s, built by jazz-trained studio musicians such as the Skatalites, who blended American jazz and rhythm and blues horn playing with Caribbean mento and calypso rhythms; ska jazz specifically denotes recordings and bands that foreground jazz harmony and improvisation within that ska rhythmic framework. A later, distinct ska-jazz revival took shape in the 1990s in New York and London, where jazz and reggae musicians deliberately fused the two idioms more explicitly. The Skatalites, featuring trombonist and arranger Don Drummond, define the original Jamaican strand, while the British group Jazz Jamaica is closely associated with the later revival.