Rocksteady

Rocksteady is the name given to a style of music popular in Jamaica between 1966 and 1968. The term comes from a dance style which Alton Ellis named in his recording "Rock Steady". The Rocksteady dance was a more relaxed affair than the earlier, more frantic ska moves.

A successor to ska, and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady saw the flowering of Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, The Kingstonians, Toots & the Maytals and The Paragons. Key musical differences between ska and rocksteady were a more relaxed tempo, a diminished use of horns, and a change of the role of the bass. With ska the bass had tended to play quarter notes in an even "walking" style, but in rocksteady the bass part became more broken-up and syncopated, using aggressive, repetitive lines which were often doubled by a guitar.

Rocksteady arose at a time when young people from the Jamaican countryside were flooding into the urban ghettos of Kingston, in neighborhoods known as Riverton City, Greenwich Town and, most notoriously, Trenchtown. Though much of the country was optimistic about their future in the immediate post-independence climate, these poverty-stricken youths did not share in this sentiment. They avoided the frenetic energy of ska, and the cultural mores of the time, many becoming delinquents who despite being anti-social, exuded a certain coolness and style. These unruly youths became known as rude boys. The rude boy phenomenon had existed in the ska period but was expressed more obviously during the rocksteady era in songs such as "Rude Boy Gone A Jail" by the Clarendonians, "No Good Rudie" by Justin Hinds & the Dominoes, "Don't Be Rude" by the Rulers. Though Alton Ellis is generally said to be the father of rocksteady for his hit "Girl I've Got a Date", other candidates for the first rocksteady single include "Take It Easy" by Hopeton Lewis, "Tougher Than Tough" by Derrick Morgan and "Hold Them" by Roy Shirley.

For more information, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocksteady