Ska-country ( English ska-country ) is a musical genre combining modern musical styles and various elements of ethnic and folk music. At the heart of it, however, are all the same rock and roll and blues guitar riffs. Often, groups playing in this style use, as emotional accents, the motives of well-known compositions of a particular musical genre: from bubblegum pop to Latin pop music , from skiffle to jazz .
In ska-country, there are often passages characteristic of melodic hard rock . Elements of jungle and reggae add to the music a positive, bright mood. Ska country music is beyond cultural, national, ethnic, philosophical or genre restrictions. The lyrics are mostly simple and playful, but often can have a deep philosophical implication. In addition, ska-country music has a rich dance character .
History
Ska country is a relatively young destination. It is believed that the roots of ska-country go back to Jamaican ska-music , which was performed by many world and Soviet bands of the 1980s: “ Strange Games ” and the Moscow group “Cabinet”. At the present stage, ska-country music does not have either ska-music or country-motifs in its purest form - it is a collective image of popular melodies and musical trends of modern digestible, crazy music. However, on the other hand, the lyrics also affect acutely social issues. Such groups position themselves as positive emotional doping for the soul, actively experimenting with sound, melodies and lyrics, urging people to search for ways of individual expression, while remaining “folk” heralds, realistically and humorously describing modern society.
Ska-country music is aimed primarily at young people, nevertheless it is interesting for its versatility, unexpected development of keynotes and unquenchable enthusiasm for listeners of different generations. This music is for “easy” people who are open to life at any age. Ska does not belong to any subculture. At different times ska was listened and listened to by rastamans, mods, skinheads, punks and partly football fans . At the same time, country is a folk motive in which both European and South American roots are traced.
If we trace the work of musical groups involved in one way or another in the development and promotion of ska-country, here we can note the influence on this style and neopunk-rock, ska-punk, whose representatives at one time or another were positioned as alternative musical groups. The Underground, which evolved from protest into an ironic narrative, is the father of modern ska-country. The influence of rock groups such as Auktsion , Zero , Va-Bank , Unfortunate Case , Crematorium , Peliken, Agatha Christie , Aquarium and others in combination with a simple courtyard folklore predetermined the themes of the work of modern Ukrainian and Russian ski-country groups.
Kitsch as an integral part of this work was maximally manifested precisely in collectives whose creative roots go back to Soviet or post-Soviet history. The St. Petersburg group Leningrad, which polished the Slavic version of sk to a brilliance, brought to the new folk certain concepts, perhaps even unknowingly, that were the first stones in the building of modern ska-country music. Foreign groups such as Gogol Bordello , The Cat Empire, Esthetic Education , 5'Nizza, Dog Heart, the modern Crematorium, Ot Vinta, all the same Mishap and many others in one way or another relate to ska-country music.
The first representatives of this style in its purest form are the groups "Alfred Koch", "LoLikBand", which in the first decade of the 2000s were able to express their creativity with ease, and at the same time, with the intricacy of life.
Style Features
Simple, catchy melodies are combined with intricate texts, and vice versa, extraordinary music can support non-binding texts without overloading the listener with passages on the one hand and without restricting his perception with standard phrases on the other. The irony, and at the same time, the simplicity of human relationships, the features of the modern worldview depicted in the textual content of songs, are, as it were, a reflection of the reality in which there is a place for both a constructive beginning and for assessing the perversity of many pseudo-values of mass contemporary culture.
For ska-country it is typical to use musical cliches as a visual aid to the origin and to increase the digestibility of unexpected illusions caused by the seeming primitivism of constructing compositions. The multinationality of motifs seen in ska-country makes this music acceptable to all segments of the population, races, beliefs and the like. The socially unifying factor is one of the characteristic features of this genre.
In addition, ska-country does not limit the sound of compositions to a specific, and even more so, a standard set of musical instruments . Here you can find both electric and acoustic guitars, various percussion and wind sections, as well as purely folk instruments: balalaika, banjo, harp , bagpipes, etc.
Groups in Russia
Close to the topic (except for the above):
- Hardcore Chanson Checkers project (Moscow)
- FARSH (Moscow)
- "Fun trissels" (St. Petersburg)