Ska

Gentleman’s Dub Club – Music Is The Girl I Love

Gentleman’s Dub Club (GDC) has been one of my favorite bands since I discovered them a few years ago.  They are one of the main reasons I wanted to pick up playing the trumpet again.  I used to play in back in high school but stopped after grade 11 as I decided to focus only on math and science courses since I had decided to go into engineering.  In hindsight, this was a really stupid thing to do since I really enjoyed it, but I suppose it’s never too late to start again.  Keeping music as a hobby is hopefully something I can instill in my children, because I find that it really is therapeutic.

Anyways, the GDC recently released a new track called “Music Is The Girl I Love” with that ska vibe that I love so much. Shortly after it was released, it became the Rodigan scorcher of the week on his BBC 1Xtra show.  When I was listening to the show, Rodigan made some interesting comments about ska music.  He mentioned that if you really think about it, that small period of time in the late 60’s in Jamaica when ska was developed, had a tremendous global influence which is pretty amazing considering the size and population of the island (not to mention the limited resources available to them at that time).  In Jamaica, ska slowed down to become rocksteady, which later gave birth to reggae.  But ska was also exported across the Atlantic and took hold in the U.K. as well.  This “second wave” of ska made a huge cultural impact there, and spawned a “third wave” back in North America in the 1980’s.  It reminded me of a video/infographic that I saw years ago which I found absolutely fascinating for the way it depicted the genealogy of various genres of music.  The video is only 20 seconds, however I guarantee that any fan of music will spend much longer analyzing it, but I digress:

 

Anyways, this latest GDC track has an official music video as well which seems to be footage from previous tours and concerts:

Looks like a lot of fun, right?  I have wanted to attend one of their shows for a while now, but they tour almost exclusively in Europe.  I did find out via their Facebook page however that they will be in North America for the first time ever later this year at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.  Unfortunately the festival will be in California, which is pretty far from Toronto, so I don’t have much hope of making this one. I’ve included the flyer for the festival below.  The line up looks pretty awesome though, so any TickuTalk readers from the west coast should definitely check it out!

gdc

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