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Before Bob Marley brought reggae to the world, before Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh, before thousands of musicians played a Jamaican rhythm, there were the men and women who created ska music, a blend of jazz, American rhythm and blues, and the indigenous music of the Caribbean. This book tells the story of ska music and its development from Jamaica to England, where the music took on a distinctively different tone, and finally to the rest of the world. Through the words of legendary artists, gleaned from more than a decade of interviews, the story of ska music is finally told by those who were there.
This is a comprehensive biography of a brilliant musician who forever shaped the course of ska, reggae, and popular music worldwide, only to take the life of his lover and in so doing, destroy his career at the age of 30. In his short life Don Drummond created an enduring legacy despite poverty, class separation, mental illness, racial politics, and the exploitation of his work. The words of Drummond's childhood friends, classmates, musicians, medical staff, legal counsel, and teachers enliven this story of his "unusual mind." They recall the early days in the recording studio, playing the instrumental backup for Bob Marley and others, and the nights in the Rasta camps where musicians burned the midnight oil and more. They remember the gyrations of his lover, Margarita, the Rumba Queen, as she tantalized audiences at Club Havana; tell what happened that tragic night when Drummond stabbed Margarita four times; reveal details of the trial (delayed more than a year as Drummond was ruled mentally unfit) and offer insights into Drummond's death in a mental asylum at age 35.
In a music world that was rougher than rough, where men took monikers of royalty and machismo like Duke and King and Lord; where boastful ringleaders fired guns into the air after descending a throne carried by their legions of followers, bandoliers crisscrossing their chests, ermine on their shoulders; where violent gangs stormed dances to "mash up," breaking sound system equipment and smashing bottles of beer on brick walls, how was a little girl with a sweet song in her soul to have a chance? Some Jamaican women found a way. They endured harassment and received little or no pay to perform as backup or alongside or in front of the male musicians. They sacrificed family and home for a life ...
Facing a life of poverty, neglect, abandonment and even homelessness, young Jamaican boys are placed in a disciplinarian Catholic boarding school. With a rigorous musical training program overseen by an eccentric jazz-loving nun, the young virtuoso graduates of Alpha Boys' School went on to change the shape of music forever. It's the 1950s in Jamaica and a musical revolution is brewing. People all over Kingston dance nightly to vast outdoor sound systems blasting American rhythm and blues records across the shanty towns. In the hotels and theaters big bands are playing jazz and calypso. Street musicians are playing home-grown folk music called mento. Out of this musical stew, Jamaica will so...
In Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation, Heather Augustyn examines how ska music first emerged in Jamaica as a fusion of popular, traditional, and even classical musical forms. As a genre, it was a connection to Africa, a means of expression and protest, and a respite from the struggles of colonization and grinding poverty. Ska would later travel with West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, where British youth embraced the music, blending it with punk and pop and working its origins as a music of protest and escape into their present lives. The fervor of the music matched the energy of the streets as racism, poverty, and violence ran rampant. But ska called for brotherhood and unity.
As the ubiquitous Jamaican musician Bob Marley once famously sang, "half the story has never been told." This rings particularly true for the little-known women in Jamaican music who comprise significantly less than half of the Caribbean nation's musical landscape. This book covers the female contribution to Jamaican music and its subgenres through dozens of interviews with vocalists, instrumentalists, bandleaders, producers, deejays and supporters of the arts. Relegated to marginalized spaces, these pioneering women fought for their claim to the spotlight amid oppressive conditions to help create and shape Jamaica's musical heritage.
A vivid and energetic history of Van Halen's legendary early years After years of playing gigs everywhere from suburban backyards to dive bars, Van Halen — led by frontman extraordinaire David Lee Roth and guitar virtuoso Edward Van Halen — had the songs, the swagger, and the talent to turn the rock world on its ear. The quartet's classic 1978 debut, Van Halen, sold more than a million copies within months of release and rocketed the band to the stratosphere of rock success. On tour, Van Halen's high-energy show wowed audiences and prompted headlining acts like Black Sabbath to concede that they'd been blown off the stage. By the year's end, Van Halen had established themselves as superstars and reinvigorated heavy metal in the process. Based on more than 230 original interviews — including with former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and power players like Pete Angelus, Marshall Berle, Donn Landee, Ted Templeman, and Neil Zlozower — Van Halen Rising reveals the untold story of how these rock legends made the unlikely journey from Pasadena, California, to the worldwide stage.
On October 15, 1967, bass player Steve Boone took the Ed Sullivan Show stage for the final time, with his band The Lovin' Spoonful. Since forming in a Greenwich Village hotel in early 1965, Boone and his bandmates had released an astounding nine Top 20 singles, the first seven of which hit the Billboard Top 10, including the iconic Boone co-writes "Summer in the City" and "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice." Little did Steve Boone know that the path of his life and career would soon take a turn for the bizarre, one that would eventually find him looking at the world through the bars of a jail cell. From captaining a seaworthy enterprise to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. from Colombia, to a period of addiction, to the successful reformation of the band he'd helped made famous, Hotter Than a Match Head tells the story of Boone's personal journey along with that of one of the most important and enduring groups of the 1960s.
When Jamaica became independent on August 6, 1962, ska music was playing in yards, dancehalls, and in recording studios as this new nation celebrated. It was a spirited music, full of promise, optimism, and energy and it was the perfect sound to showcase to the world. Now that Jamaica was independent, what better way to demonstrate the culture, beauty, and art of Jamaica than through ska, both as a music and as a dance. The Jamaican government, tourist and business industry, and newly developing music industry made it their mission to bring Jamaican music to the world, through events they termed Operation Jump Up. This is the story of that effort and how, for a brief time, ska rivaled the Beatles and the Twist.
The dawn of folk rock comes to life in Jerry Burgan’s unforgettable memoir of the pre-psychedelic 1960s and the summer that changed everything. As a naïve folksinger from Pomona, California, Burgan was thrust to the forefront of the counterculture and its aftermath. The Byrds, the Rolling Stones, the Mamas and Papas, Barry McGuire, Bo Diddley and many others make appearances in this 50th Anniversary reminiscence by the surviving cofounder of WE FIVE, the San Francisco electro-folk ensemble whose million-seller, "You Were On My Mind,” entered the world two months before Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Vying with the Byrds to record the first folk-roc...