One of the things that's often missed in music history is the influence of the dancers and the dance floor. There are dozens of different stories of what guided the change from ska to rocksteady to reggae but in reality there's a bit of overlap there, and the ska tempo sits inside the reggae groove (often you hear it best in wobble of the keyboards). Clement Dodd, I think, remarked that people couldn't be raving to ska all night long, it was too tiring, and so the musicians came up with a slower tempo, which was rocksteady. But there's another story - that the rude bwoys from country couldn't be seen skanking at top tempo all night long, so they simply sat into another groove, dancing at half-time to ska, and the musicians picked up on it. The tune below the panel is from Lynn Tait and the Jets, one of the formative rocksteady groups, a late rocksteady classic called Soul Food.
