The Urban Roots of Ska

This is one of my first published scholarly articles (click the image to read it). I wrote the original paper in graduate school in 1998 or 1999 in a seminar with Prof. Casey Blake. Casey encouraged me to present it at the American Studies Association conference, which I did. One of my all-time favorite historians, Robin D.G. Kelley, happened to be in the audience, and I was humbled and thrilled that he took an interest in the piece. He invited me to contribute a version to a special issue of Radical History Review that he was co-editing with Lisa Brock on "Transnational Black Studies." The journal issue came out in 2003, and would eventually be reprinted as a book with Duke University Press.

While my primary focus in the article is on the development of Ska through various transnational routes of cultural production, I remain fascinated by the urban origins of sonic forms. I hope to explore these topics in more detail at a later time!