Ska music uses primarily guitar and piano pieces as its core elements, with many different ska genres also using the horn and other instruments. The music is known for its quick, scratchy beats and its inheritance from many different musical traditions, most notably jazz and blues. One of the key musical patterns in ska is the emphasized offbeat (instead of the downbeat), now used in many newer traditions.
Ska music began in Jamaica. It was greatly influenced by American pop in the 1950s, and since Jamaica was closer to America than other centers of developing music, it was more exposed to these American beats than other traditions. In the previous decades, Jamaica had been the center of local Mento groups, traveling bands that went from location to location, hiring themselves out. These Mento bands and certain influential musicians helped created ska music.
Ska can be described as fusion between Jamaican Mento folk rhythm with the R&B sounds that Jamaica picked up from America. Mento groups adopted the calypso beat widely and began to develop modern music for international tastes. Drums were used to emphasize the second and fourth beats inspired by American blues and swing music. Notable names include Cecil Campbell (Prince Buster) and Duke Reid.
In the 1960s, Jamaican youth in ghetto areas became known as "Rude Boys," both a classification and a movement that became immediately associated with ska music. The styles and lyrics inspired by the Rude Boys were prevalent in the '60s, but in the '70s the movement spread to the angry youth of England and beyond. Rude Boy became a style more than a group, and different proponents of ska embraced different elements. Fighting and riots eventually broke up interest in ska by the 1980s.
Today, ska has been revived by various groups that incorporate elements found throughout its history, from the beginning of the genre in the 1950s. True ska music, however, evolved into other genres that are also still popular today, such as rocksteady and reggae, then funk and other, similar attendant traditions.