Race, Reggae, and the Undeniable History of Ska - Ska/Reggae

(...) After all, music is just music, right? It doesn't come with a contract or a constitution, does it? Nobody has the right to screen you for your views when you enter the doors of a ska show or when you buy a compilation CD. But there's still something troubling about the trend of the past five or six years, the years when MTV picked up on the "ska craze." Ska music and styles got adopted almost like team colors as the voice of "what's cool." All too often, there were no connections to ideals of racial unity, no understanding of the history.