American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations

Joyous Retaliation: Activism and Identity in the New Tone Ska Scene

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

American Culture Studies

First Advisor

Katherine Meizel (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Radhika Gajjala (Committee Member)

Third Advisor

Angela Nelson (Committee Member)

Fourth Advisor

Eric Worch (Other)

Fifth Advisor

Jeremy Wallach (Committee Member)

Abstract

Ska music—a genre that began in independent Jamaica in the late 1950s before reaching global fame in the mid-1990s—is often remembered in American popular culture as an embarrassing, implicitly white moment in popular music. Since ska’s decline in mainstream popularity, a new generation of groups dubbed new tone push back against this construction and reposition the ska scene as a space for inclusion, activism, and DIY community. This dissertation uses a mixed qualitative methodology that puts ethnographic interviews in conversation with song analysis and social media texts to understand the scene’s relationship to ska history and to social justice advocacy. I investigate activism in the scene via three case studies, which I categorize in three layers: the personal, the local, and the cultural. Drawing from interviews with new tone musicians, I use “dysphoria songs”—or songs that depict the lived experience of trans and non-binary musicians—to illustrate how personal narratives can serve as political statements in hetereopatriarchal societies. Next, the South Texas ska-themed concert “Skank for Choice” illustrates activism in local spaces, where the group L@s Skagaler@s tell stories of their home in the Rio Grande Valley to raise funds to benefit vulnerable local populations. Finally, some ska artists use the repeated lyric “Eat the Rich, Feed the Kids” to voice cultural critiques that link capitalism, colonialism, and racism in creating contemporary forms of inequality. Ultimately, I suggest that the new tone ska scene utilizes virtual scenes to recreate ska music as an overtly activist and inclusive space, thus resisting constructions of ska as embarrassing or rock in general as a white cis-male space.

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