Ska-ing Alive

Way back in 1963 reggae artist Karl Bryan put out the catchily-named single Ska Is Here To Stay, and nearly 50 years later, we might see Bryan as some kind of minor prophet, with ska music having survived – and thrived – in niche scenes worldwide. One man who probably should be buying Mr Bryan a drink is Robert Hingley, lead singer and longest-serving member of New York ska band The Toasters. Despite putting out a compilation album in 2007 called Ska Is Dead, his ongoing career is testament to the fact that ska is still very much alive.

As Bryan uncannily predicted, The Toasters have been in the skanking game since 1981, and this year their continuous circumnavigation of ska's surviving hotspots sees them docking, at last, in the Antipodes. Hingley explains why it has taken so long to make a southern stop, speaking to us not from New York, but his (relatively) newly adopted home of Spain. “I moved here in 2004,” he says, kindly setting the scene. “I'd been living in New York for 25 years, although I'm British originally. But after 9/11 everything changed for the worse in NYC, so we decided to relocate here to Spain.”

Although The Toasters began their career in New York, and are indelibly associated with the rise of the ska scene there, Hingley explains that the move to Spain hasn't hurt their schedule any. In fact, New York seems to be in something of a ska-slump. “Because I'm on tour half the year, all I need to keep The Toasters going is an Internet connection and a plane ticket,” he laughs. “If I stuck to playing in New York, I'd only be playing two or three gigs a year at the moment. These days, in the global village, it doesn't matter where I live.”

Reflecting on his continued success – or great luck, perhaps, Hingley theorises about the continued popularity of ska as a musical style – the fact that it isn't just a single musical style. ”Ska has stayed around for 25 years because anyone who gets into this music can identify with it. It's also flexible, and emerges in different ways, ska from reggae, ska pop and in the '90s third wave there was ska punk. Now a lot people are listening to rocksteady, just as it was played 1987. It's not a simplistic music form – on the inside there's jazz, soul, reggae, African beats – it's more of a complicated beast than you might think, it has morphing expressions expands to encompass other musical forms.”

Hingley thinks the lack of sustained commerciality of ska – 2-Tone and '90s ska-punk occasional chart successes notwithstanding – is the key to its ability to remain fresh. “It's not a musical form created in some recording studio for some flavour of the week record label,” he says. “It has its own sense of cultural validity. I was galvanised in the seventies by 2-Tone music. Not just the record label, but the politics of 2-Tone. It was the voice of a political front against Thatcher and her cronies – it was rebel music.”

What keeps him focussed on Ska in the 21st century is this continued political potency. “At no time has it been more important to wake up and rip people's attention away from surfing the Internet and to realise that we're living in a new medieval time when human rights are being rolled back hundred of years. It's important to see that our so-called democratically elected governments don't seem to represent the people who voted for them.

“Under these circumstances it is incumbent on us all to be a bit of a rebel, to question authority. Music – ska music – is one of the last platforms where people can raise these things and complain about them. 2-Tone artists did it in the '70s, and politics have continued until this day to be an important part of the culture of ska.”

The Toasters will be playing the following shows:

Friday 14 September - The Palais, Hepburn Springs VIC
Saturday 15 September - The Espy, St Kilda VIC
Wednesday 19 September - Cabbage Tree Hotel, Wollongong NSW
Thursday 20 September - Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle NSW
Friday 21 September - Annandale Hotel, Sydney NSW
Saturday 22 September - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD
Sunday 23 September - Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast QLD