2008 Pop Conference Bios/Abstracts

Jeffrey Govan

Jeffrey Govan is a veteran bassist of the Los Angeles Jamaican Ska music scene. As a scholar, he is interested in researching the interstitial social space that blacks and Latinos occupy in the L.A. music scene, and how identity is shaped by these underemphasized cross-cultural and transnational exchanges in subcultures.Panel(s):
Latin@ Sounds and the Red, White, and Blue
Friday, April 11, 2008, 9:00 - 10:45Abstract:

"'Latin Goes Ska: More Than a Two-Tone Look"
Despite the fact that several founders of Ska in Jamaica were Cuban-born (Rico Rodríguez, Rolando Alphonso, Laurel Aitken, Tommy McCook) and had incorporated Latin sounds into their music, the Latinidad of Ska has been generally overlooked or else viewed as a more recent phenomenon—whether as a distinct genre, "Latin Ska," or as an element in hybrid forms (e.g. rock en español). Latin music has shaped Ska from the very beginning. For instance, "Pachito e Che," one of the most popular songs by another Cuban-born musician and bandleader Damaso Pérez Prado, "The King of Mambo," provides the musical foundation for the mid-1960s single "Latin Goes Ska" by the Skatalites. Mambo and Ska, however, took divergent transnational paths. The former gained popularity in Latin America and the United States, eventually becoming consolidated as "salsa." Ska influenced the formation of reggae, and both forms became phenomena in England—Ska only briefly reaching the U.S. during what's known as the Second Wave, or "Two-Tone" period (1979-81) with its monochromatic visual style (black-and-white checkerboards, etc.) In many ways this style symbolizes the black-and-white paradigm in which Latino/a cultures and musicians don't fit. In this paper, I examine the relationship between Ska and Latin music—from Pérez Prado and the Skatalites to the various ways this relationship has been continued in places like Los Angeles, where Ska has fused with Mexican banda, Colombian cumbia, salsa, and son jarocho. These fusions are not simply pushing Ska in new directions; they're evoking its overlooked and complex history.