TRACK SELECTION PROCESS

SKA MUSIC
Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was a precursor to rocksteady and reggae.
Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line, accented guitar, or piano rhythms on the offbeat, and in some cases, jazz-like horn riffs. In the 1960s, ska was the preferred music genre of rude boys and was also popular with British mods and skinheads.

REGGAE MUSIC
Reggae is based on a rhythm style characterized by regular chops on the off-beat, known as the skank.
The traditional ska beat was transformed by slowing down the tempo and in turn created reggae music.
Reggae song lyrics deal with many subjects, including faith, love, relationships, poverty, injustice and other broad social issues.

NEWER STYLES & SPIN OFFS
TOASTING (RAPPING)
The toasting style first used by 1960s Jamaican artists and is the act of talking or chatting over a rhythm or beat which can be improvised or prewritten. This was traditionally used in Jamaican music forms dancehall, reggae, ska, dub and lovers rock, but then this mix of talking and chanting eventually influenced the development of rapping in US HIPHOP/RAP MUSIC.

DANCEHALL -this genre developed around 1980 and is characterized by a deejay singing and rapping or toasting over raw and fast rhythms.

RAGGA/RAGGAMUFFIN -a subgenre of dancehall, in which the instrumentation primarily consists of electronic music and sampling.

REGGAETON -a form of dance music that first became popular with Latino youths in the early 1990s. It blends reggae and dancehall with Latin American genres such as bomba and plena, as well with hip hop.

REGGAE ROCK -a fusion genre that combines elements of reggae and rock music.


ALTHEA & DONNA - UPTOWN TOP RANKIN'


BACKGROUND INFO
- The young singers Althea Forrest and Donna Reid made a big surprise with their one-off hit, "Uptown Top Ranking".
- "Uptown Top Ranking" has been covered by Scout Niblett, who released it as a single in 2004. The song was also covered by Black Box Recorder and by Portishead

PROS:
- Suitable lyrics
- No existing video, not very well known song/artist 'one hit wonder' -audience will therefore have no previous image to associate with
- Generically identifiable as reggae music
- up beat happy tone -appeal to a wide range of people of different ages

CONS:
- Slightly repetitive rhythm/lyrics
- slow paced, relaxed -make hard to hook audience in through images?
- currently not a very popular genre