What is it about ska music that keeps finding new generations of fans?

“Young people, college kids – I’ve seen it in Russia and in the States – they love the music. It’s melodious. It’s lively. Good melodies, you know, good melodies never die. And the Skatalites made a few. They’re still singing it now,” Sterling explains.

The crowd at Ikra may not have understood every word Sterling said as he emceed the show in his rich, Jamaican accent, but they certainly knew the tunes. Fans shouted and clapped along to classics like “Latin Goes Ska,” “Guns of Navaronne,” and even the Skatalites’ version of The Specials’ hit “A Message to You, Rudy”. Some in the audience were even experimenting with ska style – from the suspenders and fedoras associated with the 1980s 2-Tone ska revival to the dreadlocks and signature colors common in reggae, which evolved from roots in ska.

Ska has been developed and elaborated on by so many other musicians. Is that a good thing, or would the musicians rather left ska to the originals?

“I think everybody should take part in it and play their side the way they feel it. Music must live on. Everybody should play and enjoy what they’re doing. Other people play ska, and I like the ska they play, too. That may be how some people hear about the Skatalites. You go to find out how something really started, and you run into the original people,” Sterling says.

Skatalites trumpeter and songwriter Kevin Batchelor is from a younger generation that fell in love with ska long after his band-mates laid the foundation. How old was he when he first heard the Skatalites’ music?

“Not too early, probably in my early 30s – now I’m in my late 40s. It wasn’t until I was living in Boston, that’s where I got exposed to reggae on the whole, on the East Coast,” Batchelor replies.

“I came up in St Louis, so I wasn’t listening to anything too exotic. Just [Bob Marley’s] Babylon By Bus, and that was it. I didn’t have a single ska record. Now I’m noticing now that kids are picking ska up at a much younger age. By the time I joined the band in November 2002, I realized what it was about.”

Photo by Judith Anderson

Batchelor says he’s trying to stay in the lane of old-school ska music. “With older musicians, you need to keep that retro feeling. If you get in a car for a three-hour ride with Lester and Lloyd [Knibb, drummer and founding member], they’ve got their new iPods, but they still want to be listening to the Skatalites. They’re pretty much locked in.”

Lester Sterling often talks about the band’s past – about practice sessions in Trenchtown and recording with Bob Marley at the famous Studio One – but he’s far from giving up on the Skatalites’ future.

What keeps the band going after so many years, and how will they know when and if it’s time to give it up?

“When you’re in this business you never really think of yourself as getting old. I know people think of me as being older, but I’m still doing the same thing. Picking up the horn, blowing, dancing. When I can’t do that any more, then it’s time to quit. You look at the next guy who’s playing into his 80s, so why are you going to stop? As long as people still want to hear me play,” Sterling says.

If the response from the Moscow crowd is any indication, Sterling and the Skatalites will be at it for quite a while.

The Skatalites round out the Russian leg of their tour with shows Friday, September 4 in Yekaterinburg and Saturday, September 5 in St. Petersburg.

Nicholas Levy, RT