Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was a precursor to rocksteady and reggae.
Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line, accented guitar, or piano rhythms on the offbeat, and in some cases, jazz-like horn riffs. In the 1960s, ska was the preferred music genre of rude boys (although many ska artists condemned the violent rude boy lifestyle). Ska was also popular with British mods and skinheads, which led artists such as Symarip, Laurel Aitken, Desmond Dekker, and The Pioneers to aim songs at those audiences. Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three waves indicating a revival in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and another revival in the 1990s, mostly based in the United States.