Ska kills flowers

Trolls are nothing new. Even in the mid 1960s in Jamaica, decades before the internet, trolls took their aim at various gripes in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Daily Gleaner, and ska could be the target. I’ve started a file of these funny little gems, and offer two excerpts here, from just one day, an average day, on March 22, 1964. It’s worth a little giggle.

The first, from E.A.W. Morris, concerns his experience in Cinchona Gardens in the Blue Mountains. Morris states in the beginning of his letter, which he titled, “Strange Practices,” that he is a temporary resident of Jamaica, and he airs his grievances, including the location of a “no parking” sign and an encounter with a police offer, but it s the end of the letter that I include below:

The very same section of “Letters to the Editor” includes a different writer, G. McKenzie, who complains about sacrilegious ska music. It is not the first such letter I have read. Some found that certain lyrics were meant for one arena only–the church–and to include them in ska music, which was not sacred, was akin to blasphemy.