Ska

From the summer of 1966, up until 1967, a whole series of records referring to the exploits of so-called Rude Boys were released in Jamaica. Almost every major artist on the island recorded material featuring lyrics either condemning or defending the actions of the young men who spread mayhem across the island. Some described the Rude Boys as no more than glorified hooligans, who caused trouble for trouble's sake, while others depicted them as heroes, akin to the gangsters and cowboys featured in the popular films of the day. To most, however, they were simply victims of the deprived social conditions into which they were born and subsequently raised. Whichever way one viewed them, the Rude Boys were an established part of Jamaican life and had been around long before the glut of releases which drew attention to there activities. The main reason for the sudden interest was the explosion of violence during the summer of 1966, undoubtedly agitated to a large degree by the exceptionally hot weather. By October, following six deaths over the preceding three months, the Jamaican government declared a state of emergency and instructed the police and military to cordon off the trouble zone in Kingston and enforce a 10pm to 6am curfew. The fact that this period coincides with one of the major transformations in Jamaican music is no coincidence.[sic] The heat which had made tempers become frayed had also made dancing to Ska an exhausting experience and it was a natural progression to slow the tempo of the music. Eventually the rhythm slowed to such an extent that it became a completely new sound - Ska had been replaced by Rocksteady. By early 1967, both the weather and tempers had cooled and the Rude Boy theme became less frequent in song lyrics. Over the years that followed, Rude Boys were rarely mentioned and despite the succes of Perry Hanzell's film, The Harder They Come, which starred Jimmy Cliff as the doomed anti-hero, 'Ivanhoe Martin Rhygin', they featured only occasionally in songs such as the Slicker's Johnny Too Bad. Towards the end of the seventies, British Ska bands such as The Specials and Madness re-invented the image of the Rude Boy, presenting him as a fun-loving young man, attired in a stylish two-tone suit and a pork-pie hat, more akin to the Mods of the sixties than [to] the original Jamaican version. The British Rude Boy was not to last, however, and following the demise of the Ska revival, he quickly vanished. Since

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