So You Want to be a Rude Boy?Noah Wildman examines the history of Jamaican music, and the rude boy culture of yesterday and today.What is a rude boy? What is a rude girl? What does 'to be rude' mean? Today, it simply means that you're a dedicated member of the ska scene. If you have a good ska collection, if you dress up in a way that indicates that you like ska, if your style and taste makes it obvious to others that you're in with the ska, you are therefore 'rude' by the definition of ska crowd.Where did the term come from? I recently spoke to Tommy McCook, the founder, leader and tenor saxophonist of the original ska band, the Skatalites. When I asked him about rude boys coming to Skatalites in the early Sixties, McCook said: "Actually in our tenure as the Skatalites, in the time of the ska music, we did not have any violence. We didn't have any rude boys, so to speak. The violence came around 1966. I remember when rock steady just came in, in late '65. Then in '66 violence broke out wickedly across the island, so much so that we had to have a curfew in Western and Eastern Kingston. So, that's when the rude boy thing came out."The truth is that 'rudeness' and the original 'rude boys' had absolutely nothing to do with ska. The rude boy came AFTER ska music, during the time of rock steady! Rude boys were the name given to a subculture of young street corner hoodlums, gangsters and other unemployables. In emigrating to England, the rude boys helped spread Jamaican music to the working-class skinheads, another youth subculture. When the 2Tone sound of ska (the second wave of ska in the late Seventies) made it into the popular media, youth subculture changed with it. Today , a new American subculture revolves around the images of the 'rude boy' and 'skinhead.'The rude boy was not the first subculture of Jamaica, but it was the first youth subculture. After independence in the early Sixties (which gave birth to the nationalist 'ska' music), over-pop
Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / Check it out
