By Lorali Mossaver-Rahmani

SKACORE:

Picking It Up from the LA Underground 

This visual exploration of Los Angeles Chicanx and Latinx DIY (do-it-yourself) ska-punk—or “skacore”—music, is a nod to the skacore musicians who curate musical spaces of community solidarity and political resistance amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It is my hope that this photo essay also encourages a more multimedia ethnography within music studies and the humanities. This project intentionally combines oral historical methods, alongside photographs, to encourage a multimedia methodological intervention within our disciplines to dynamically show–rather than tell–the stories we share and steward. 

Political discourse, Spanglish-Spanish-English lyrics, intense punk vocalizations, blaring horn melodies, skanking and moshing in a circular motion (not to mention throwing putazos, or punches), and quick guitar up-beats all characterize the sounds and movement of a skacore show in Los Angeles. When ska musicians say the adage “pick it up”, they are referencing a quickening of tempo that “revs” up the crowds and gets everyone moving. This movement serves as fuel for musical and bodily momentum at shows, as well as political movements at the greater community level. 

Skacore defines not just a syncretic musical style, but a way of being that incorporates Latinx diasporic community values and a spirit of desmadre, or recklessness. But before there was skacore, there was ska. The literature on ska music, the precursor to reggae, is vast regarding its critical role as a syncretic song genre that helped form a new post-independence Jamaican national identity in the 1950s/1960s; however, literature surrounding ska’s various cultural interactions is scant. Ska continued to develop and proliferate over the next thirty years throughout various locales in the Caribbean, the U.K., the U.S., and Latin America. The U.S. Orange County ska-punk scene, still operating outside the mainstream, received some popular recognition with “third wave” ska bands like Reel Big Fish, Sublime, Save Ferris among others, while ska-punk bands of color remained further ostracized and gate-kept from playing larger venues and festivals. Alongside, and in response to ska’s white-male dominated third wave, Latinx and Chicanx musicians created an underground scene in the 1990s1990’s that, to this day, is all their own. This subset of ska music is locally referred to as skacore. Since the mid 1990s, key players like Clemente Ruiz and skacore bands such as La Resistencia, Matamoska, La Pobreska, Raskahuele, Gabriela Penka, and more recently El Colectivo Sabinas (a primarily women-lead ska band), among others have played politically charged, “dirty”/punk-infused ska music in backyards, makeshift venues, clubs and theaters, and outdoor spaces throughout East LA, South LA, Hollywood, and Orange County. 

This photo essay aims to document moments from Skaland 3, a three-staged ska festival at Catch One LA that was held in September of 2021. Skaland 3 was originally scheduled for early 2020–prior to the pandemic–but was shut down when all hell broke loose in March of 2020. Tickets that were purchased for the original date would still be honored and folks would be expected to mask-up and vax-up. However, although masks, vaccination cards, or negative COVID-19 test results were required to enter Catch One LA, there was no way to enforce the mask mandate once inside the venue. 

Skaland 3 has been described as “massive” and as “the ska punk underground reunited”. Skaland 3 was the first national ska festival since the onset of COVID-19 in March of 2020. The energy of the venue was buzzing with cathartic highs from the crowd that had waited so long to experience another show. Musicians, too, were eager to perform and earn a living again. During the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown in LA, scene musicians had tried their best to keep the scene alive. Online benefit concerts and live streams grew wildly successful and even reached international participation, though they were not enough to financially sustain most DIY musicians. Through the skacore collective and DIY record label, The Skacore Cartel, Esteban Flores organized three separate “Quarantine for a Cause” virtual shows that hosted local musicians alongside international ska bands. Funds raised were donated to organizations that were in solidarity with BLM, abortion rights, and #StopAsianHate over the course of 2020 and 2021. These online live-streams were crucial in maintaining the LA skacore community, but nothing beats the feeling of a live show. 

At the risk of over-romanticizing Skaland 3, the subject of this photo essay, I have heard it expressed that “the scene will never be the same”. Many skacore fans and community members have suffered great loss and withstood significant trauma as a result of COVID-19’s devastating effects on housing, public health care, and employment. This should not be understated. As the pandemic takes on new characteristics, the latest being the Omicron variant, the Chicanx and Latinx community in LA (and other POC and Black folks) in the surrounding areas continue to experience disproportionate effects of the virus. Skaland 3, in September of 2021, gave fans an excuse to put these pressing issues aside for a single evening. Time will tell how DIY musicians and their underground fanbase will adapt and innovate their approach to music making 

As stated previously Skaland 3, organized by Evoekore Media, marked a significant coming-together of skacore bands from the local LA scene and beyond. The festival’s headliners were Jamaican ska legends, The Skatalites. The other performances included sets from the following skacore bands: Red Store Bums, Raskahuele, Matamoska, The Paranoias, Los Kong Fu Monkeys, Dskarados, Los Aggrios, Rundown Kreeps, Beta 7, Spare Change Ska, Trinidad Suave, Bomb Threat, Sancho Villa, and Los Nauticals among many others. My research with DIY skacore communities in Los Angeles focuses on the resilient and revolutionary musicians who intentionally build community through DIY affective performances on and off-stage. This affective work aimed at emotionally impacting concert goers is the heart and soul of the DIY skacore community and, as I contend, is conceptualized as unwaged labor that generates the meaning and value attached to the Los Angeles skacore DIY scene. This affective labor has become ever more important since the pandemic began. Subversive lyrics underscoring issues related to immigration rights, border politics, discrimination, police violence, patriarchy, and capitalism are juxtaposed with songs that speak of daily life, love, partying, “letting it all go”, and throwing putazos [punches] in the pit. 

With allegiance to agentive voice, I include a large quote from Clemente Ruiz, skacore event organizer, musician, photographer and producer, discussing the skacore scene. He explains,

People sometimes here in the US think ska bands died, but it grew in other parts of the world. And then, it leaked back into the Latin ska bands that we have in L.A. Most people in the rest of the world don't expect Latinos in L.A. to listen to ska music–or even know about it–but it's what we do...I’m a musician, producer, I’m also the guy behind the biggest ska punk events we have in L.A…If I didn't have music, and I didn’t have the ska punk shows to go to I don’t know where I would’ve been. Latin ska punk has influences from all over the place. It’s a genre that collects bits and pieces of everything from Jamaican reggae, to hardcore, to the Mexican Latin ska–it’s just a clash of everything. Latin ska started popping up in L.A. in the mid-late 90’s. It was in the neighborhood. We had a hard time playing legitimate venues. That’s kinda what sparked me having to organize some of these events, because no one would do it for us. I think a lot of these Latino kinds are attracted to ska music–the way people dance, the way people dress; they just find themselves in that. The rhythm really gets you going. It touches a lot of people. To a lot of these kids that go to our shows it helps them find themselves. It makes them feel like they do belong to something. It’s a very personal connection to them. (Ruiz 2017) 

As the written word, often fails to capture the ephemeral embodiment of direct experience, I offer these photographs and oral history quotations as a humble expression of what it may mean to be a part of the LA Skacore community during a global pandemic.