Skinhead Culture - Music

Skinhead Music

The skinhead subculture was originally associated with black music genres such as soul, ska, rocksteady and early reggae.The link between skinheads and Jamaican music led to the uprise of the skinhead reggae genre, performed by artists such as: Desmond Dekker, Derrick Morgan, Laurel Aitken, Symarip and The Pioneers.

The most popular music style for late-1970s skinheads was 2 Tone, which was a mix of ska, rocksteady, reggae, pop and punk rock, The 2 Tone genre was named after 2 Tone Records, an English record label that featured bands such as The Specials, Madness and The Selecter. Some late-1970s skinheads also liked certain punk rock bands, such as Sham 69 and Menace.

Also in the late 1970s, after the first wave of punk rock, many skinheads listened to Oi!, a working class punk genre Musically, Oi! mixes standard punk with elements of football chants, pub rock and British glam rock.The Oi! scene was partly a response to a sense that many individuals in the early punk scene were "trendy university people using long words, trying to be artistic ... and losing touch"

Although many white skinheads listened to Oi! music, they also developed a separate genre that was more in line with their politics they believed in -  Rock Against Communism.The most notable RAC band was Skrewdriver, which started out as a non-political punk band but changed into a neo-Nazi band after the first lineup broke up and a new lineup was formed.RAC started out musically similar to Oi! and punk, but has since become a mix of many styles. White power music that sounds like hardcore is sometimes called hatecore.