SKALICIOUS is the title of a ska album to be released this month by Penthouse Records.

The set has 15 songs by artists including singers Marcia Griffiths, Tessanne Chin, Etana, Ernie Smith, singjay Buju Banton and deejay Exco Levi.

(L-R) Tessanne Chin. Buju Banton. Top: Marcia Griffiths

Head of Penthouse, producer Donovan Germain, says he started work on the project five years ago.

“I thought it would be something different, I don’t want to confine myself to reggae,” Germain told the Jamaica Observer.

He said not all the artists he called up were keen on doing ska, an uptempo, horn-hooked beat that emerged in the early 1960s.

“Some were skeptical, they played it safe.

Banton, currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking, contributed the song Better Must Come while Griffiths did My Promised Land.

Strings of Love (Tessanne Chin) Johnny Too Bad (Etana), Jamdown 50 (Ernie Smith) and Five Decades by Toronto-based Exco Levi are some of the other songs on Skalicious.

Multi-instrumentalist Ernie Wilks, and horn players Dean Fraser (saxophone), trombonists Nambo Robinson and Everton Pessoa and trumpeter Dwight Richards, worked on the album.

Germain, one of the top producers in contemporary reggae, has dabbled with ska in the past, particularly on Banton’s 1997 album, Inna Heights.