Ska is the Jamaican music genre associated with Bob Marley and the Wailers’ early recordings.
The Wailers began recording in the early 1960s, when ska was Jamaica’s dominant popular style. Ska typically used a strong walking bass line, horn sections, and guitar or piano accents on the offbeat. The Wailers’ early records, including “Simmer Down,” reflected this sound before the group moved through rocksteady and into reggae.
Jamaican popular music developed rapidly during this period. Rocksteady emerged in the mid-1960s with a slower groove, and reggae developed from those earlier forms by the late 1960s. Marley’s later international music is usually identified as reggae, but his earliest recordings belong to the ska era.
Mento is an older Jamaican folk style, while dub is a studio-oriented form that became prominent later. Dancehall developed much later and should not be used for the Wailers’ first recordings. Ska is therefore the precise historical genre for Marley’s early musical period.