I've been listening to some ska recently, and specifically poking at what makes each wave what it is. (I think I'm looking for a particular flavor of ska but I don't know what, exactly). Ska is such a fun/ny sound in the middle of so many other genres and I love it. As much as I love it, though, I don't own any albums and don't have any sorta go-to for getting a ska fix, which is what all this listening is for. It's been very fun looking up different bands and songs and there are some real gems in the oldest ska albums. The more laid back first wave is a really lovely listen, altho not what I was looking for.
in poking at the 2nd wave of british ska, tho, my rabbit trailing really ramped up; I found the music video to the Special's Free Nelson Mandela and: yeah it rules for a lot of reasons and I rolled down a lot of trails from this but today's main one is this--check out that footwork! that funk and dance! It's not the ska or a skank[1] (which I feel like does have a through line to the ska, unlike this,) but something with vim and some tap-like style and I had to know more. So I stumbled along to an interview with Jerry Dammers on recording the video, where he does mention it, but just causually, as some "crazy jazz dancing". I was able to pull along some searches with that tho, falling into a lovely world of UK 80s Jazz Dancing (or old fashioned jazz dancing sometimes?) and then to some specific hot groups like IDJ who had some Extremely Good Moves. I think it'd be a joy to be able to move like that. I love a good footwork heavy dance, and especially something with pop and pep, so this hits a sweetspot for me. In that last video there's a step where they drop to one knee in a turn and then pop up and back down and. Man! that's cool.
I rarely get opportunities to dance, and I really don't need to go that hard, but I think I should learn how to do some smaller steps in this style. They're Good.
side note: what an Era this video was recorded in ↩︎