Reggae Main article: Reggae Reggae musician Bob Marley did much to raise international awareness of the Rastafari movement Reggae was born amidst poor blacks in Trenchtown, the main ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica, who listened to radio stations from the United States. Jamaican musicians, many of them Rastas, soon blended traditional Jamaican folk music and drumming with American R&B, and jazz into ska, that later developed into reggae under the influence of soul. Reggae began to enter international consciousness in the early 1970s, and Rastafari mushroomed in popularity internationally, largely due to the fame of Bob Marley, who actively and devoutly preached Rastafari, incorporating Nyabinghi and Rastafarian chanting into his music, lyrics and album covers. Songs like Rastaman Chant led to the movement and reggae music being seen as closely intertwined in the consciousness of audiences across the world. Other famous reggae musicians with strong Rastafarian elements in their music include Peter Tosh, Freddie McGregor, Toots & the Maytals, Burning Spear, Black Uhuru, Prince Lincoln Thompson, Bunny Wailer, Prince Far I, Israel Vibration, The Congos, Adrian Nones, Cornell Campbell, Dennis Brown, Inner Visions and hundreds more. Reggae music expressing Rasta doctrine The first reggae single that sang about Rastafari and reached Number 1 in the Jamaican charts was Bongo Man by Little Roy in 1969.[62] Early Rasta reggae musicians (besides Marley) whose music expresses Rastafari doctrine well are Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer (in Blackheart Man), Prince Far I, Linval Thompson, Ijahman Levi (especially the first 4 albums), Misty-in-Roots (Live), The Congos (Heart of the Congos), The Rastafarians, The Abyssinians, Culture, Big Youth, and Ras Michael And The Sons Of Negus. The Jamaican jazz percussionist Count Ossie, who had played on a number of ska and reggae recordings, recorded albums with themes relating to Rasta history, doctrine, and culture. Rastafari doctrine as developed in the 1980s was further expressed musically by a number of other prominent artists, such as Burning Spear, Steel Pulse, Third World, The Gladiators, Sister Carol, Black Uhuru, Aswad, and Israel Vibration. Rastafari ideas have spread beyond the Jamaican community to other countries including Russia, where artists such as Jah Division write songs about Jah, and South Africa where Lucky Dube first learned reggae music from Peter Tosh recordings. Afro-American punk band Bad Brains are notable followers of the Rastafari movement and have written songs (I Against I, etc.) that promote the doctrine. In the 21st century, Rastafari sentiments are spread through roots reggae and dancehall, subgroups of reggae music, with many of their most important proponents promoting the Rastafari religion, such as Capleton, Sizzla, Anthony B, Barrington Levy, Jah Mason, Pressure, Midnite, Natural Black, Luciano, Cocoa Tea, Jah Cure and Richie Spice. Several of these acts have gained mainstream success and frequently appear on the popular music charts. Most recently artists such as Damian Marley (son of Bob Marley), Alborosie and Million Stylez have blended hip-hop with reggae to re-energize classic Rastafari issues such as social injustice, revolution and the honour and responsibility of parenthood using contemporary musical style. Berlin-based dub techno label Basic Channel has subsidiary labels called Rhythm & Sound and Burial Mix whose lyrics strongly focus on many aspects of Rastafari culture and ideology, including the acceptance of Haile Selassie I. Notable tracks include Jah Rule, Mash Down Babylon, We Be Troddin, and See Mi Yah. Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad OConnor released two rastafari/roots reggae CDs – Throw Down Your Arms and Theology. Film [icon] This section requires expansion. (March 2010) There are several Jamaican films important to the history of Rastafari, such as Rockers, The Harder They Come, Land of Look Behind, Countryman, ((Bob Marley (film)| Bob Marley)) and Babylon. History Ethiopian world view Before Garvey, there had been two major circumstances that proved conducive to the conditions that established a fertile ground for the incubation of Rastafari in Jamaica: the history of resistance, exemplified by the Maroons, and the forming of an Afrocentric, Ethiopian world view with the spread of such religious movements as Bedwardism, which flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. These groups had long carried a tradition of what musician Bob Marley referred to as resisting against the system. Marcus Garvey Main article: Marcus Garvey Marcus Garvey Rastas see Marcus Mosiah Garvey as a prophet, with his philosophy fundamentally shaping the movement, and with many of the early Rastas having started out as Garveyites. He is often seen as a second John the Baptist. One of the most famous prophecies attributed to him involving the coronation of Haile Selassie I was the 1927 pronouncement Look to Africa, for there a black king shall be crowned, although an associate of Garveys, James Morris Webb, had made very similar public statements as early as 1921.[63][64] Marcus Garvey promoted Black Nationalism, black separatism, and Pan-Africanism: the belief that all black people of the world should join in brotherhood and work to decolonise the continent of Africa — then still controlled by the white colonialist powers. He promoted his cause of black pride throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and was particularly successful and influential among lower-class blacks in Jamaica and in rural communities. Although his ideas have been hugely influential in the development of Rastafari culture, Garvey never identified himself with the movement. Garvey was even critical of Haile Selassie for leaving Ethiopia at the time of the Italian Fascist occupation, Hailie Selassie is the ruler of a country where black men are chained and flogged...He will go down in history as a great coward who ran away from his country.[65] In addition, his Universal Negro Improvement Association disagreed with Leonard Howell over Howells teaching that Haile Selassie was the Messiah. Rastafari nonetheless may be seen as an extension of Garveyism. In early Rasta folklore, it is the Black Star Line (actually a shipping company bought by Garvey to encourage repatriation to Liberia) that takes them home to Africa. Other early written foundations Although not strictly speaking a Rastafari document, the Holy Piby, written by Robert Athlyi Rogers from Anguilla in the 1920s, is acclaimed by many Rastafarians as a formative and primary source. Robert Athlyi Rogers founded an Afrocentric religion known as Athlicanism in the US and West Indies in the 1920s. Rogers religious movement, the Afro-Athlican Constructive Church, saw Ethiopians (in the Biblical sense of all Black Africans) as the chosen people of God, and proclaimed Marcus Garvey, the prominent Black Nationalist, an apostle. The church preached self-reliance and self-determination for Africans. The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, written during the 1920s by a preacher called Fitz Balintine Pettersburg, is a surrealistic stream-of-consciousness polemic against the white colonial power structure that is also considered formative, a palimpsest of Afrocentric thought. The first document to appear that can be labelled as truly Rastafari was Leonard P. Howells The Promise Key, written using the pen name G.G. [for Gangun-Guru] Maragh, in the early 1930s. In it, he claims to have witnessed the Coronation of the Emperor and Empress on 2 November 1930 in Addis Ababa, and proclaims the doctrine that Ras Tafari is the true Head of Creation and that the King of England is an impostor. This tract was written while Howell was in jail on charges of sedition. Emergence Selassie I in the 1930s Emperor Haile Selassie I was crowned King of Kings, Elect of God, and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah in Addis Ababa on November 2, 1930. The event created great publicity throughout the world, including in Jamaica, and particularly through two consecutive Time magazine articles about the coronation (he was later named Times Person of the Year for 1935, the first Black person to appear on the cover), as well as two consecutive National Geographic issues around the same time. Haile Selassie almost immediately gained a following as both God and King amongst poor Jamaicans, who came to be known as Rastafarians, and who looked to their Bibles, and saw what they believed to be the fulfilling of many prophecies from the book of Revelation. As Ethiopia was the only African country to be free from colonialism, and Haile Selassie was the only black leader accepted among the kings and queens of Europe, the early Rastas viewed him with great reverence. Over the next two years, three Jamaicans who all happened to be overseas at the time of the coronation, each returned home and independently began, as street preachers, to proclaim the divinity of the newly crowned Emperor as the returned Christ,[66] arising from their interpretations of Biblical prophecy and based partly on Haile Selassies status as the only African monarch of a fully independent state, with the titles King of Kings and Conquering Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). First, on 8 December 1930, Archibald Dunkley, formerly a seaman, landed at Port Antonio and soon began his ministry; in 1933, he relocated to Kingston where the King of Kings Ethiopian Mission was founded. Joseph Hibbert returned from Costa Rica in 1931 and started spreading his own conviction of the Emperors divinity in Benoah district, Saint Andrew Parish, through his own ministry, called Ethiopian Coptic Faith; he too moved to Kingston the next year, to find Leonard Howell already teaching many of these same doctrines, having returned to Jamaica around the same time. With the addition of Robert Hinds, himself a Garveyite and former Bedwardite, these four preachers soon began to attract a following among Jamaicas poorer classes, who were already beginning to look to Ethiopia for moral support. Leonard Percival Howell Main article: Leonard Howell Leonard Percival Howell, who has been described as the First Rasta,[67] became the first to be persecuted, charged with sedition for refusing loyalty to the King of Great Britain and Ireland, George V. The British government would not tolerate Jamaicans loyal to Haile Selassie in what was then a British colony. When he was released, he formed a settlement called Pinnacle, at St. Catherine in Jamaica in 1939 on 500 acres (2.0 km2) of land which attracted as many as 4,000 people.[68][69] Reports surfaced that the Rastas were urging the communities around them not to pay taxes to the government. In 1941, the police raided the community and Howell and his followers were sent to prison. After their release, several members attempted to resurrect Pinnacle, but law enforcement continued raiding the community. The raids by colonial and post colonial forces destroyed the Pinnacle, and dispersed the dispossessed Rastafari into the slums of Jamaica.[70] The Promised Key Question book-new.svg This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2012) This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedias quality standards. The specific problem is: needs proper integration with existing content. Please help improve this section if you can. (March 2013) The Rastafari Movement was founded by Leonard Percival Gong Howell in 1932. Leonard P. Howell was a Mystic Jamaican born in the hills of Clarendon, Jamaica in 1898. Howell left Jamaica as a youth traveling the world over returning to Jamaica from the United States of America on November 17, 1932. He had taken voluntary deportation after his application for citizenship was denied. On his return to Jamaica, he was appalled at the standard of living of the enslaved African people who were now being released from plantation slavery. They were poor, penniless and desolate after hundreds of years of British and Spanish slavery, hungry, suffering yaws, cholera and yellow fever. The governing British were unwilling to help the former slaves and doctors fees were far more than the majority could afford. Despite being officially freed of slavery, many black Jamaicans were left with no option but to work in the jobs they had previously carried out as slaves, at very low wages. Colonialism left the people with a very low self-image in 1932 Colonial Jamaica. Their knowledge of their ancestral roots in Africa and African royalty had been lost to them through hundreds of years of slavery. Leonard P. Howell saw it as his task to rebuild the broken men and women, his people. He wrote The Promised Key the doctrine of Rastafari in Accra, Ghana and many other works which were burnt by the colonial government References :-Daily Gleaner Jamaica, The First Rasta by Helen Lee He had attended the Coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie and Empress Menen in Ethiopian on November 2, 1930 and knew what the crowning of the Emperor and Empress signified to all African People. Leonard P. Howell had audiences with the Emperor Haile Selassie when he was Supreme Regent of Ethiopia. Rasta began with Leonard P. Howell and his street preaching to lift the spirits of the enslaved black men and women from Kingston to St Thomas. He was very popular, had a bakery along with his skills as a Naturopathic Doctor which he sustained himself his people and his children. He was tried for sedition in St Thomas, Jamaica, in the case cause celebre of the assizes. He spoke out against the wrongs of the crown and colonial Jamaica against the men women and children of Africa stolen, sold and enslaved in Jamaica for hundreds of years. He called for International Salvation for all peoples globally while on trial for his life. Howell was found guilty and sentenced to two years imprisonment. On his return, the Rastafari Movement faced a Moraunt Bay rebellion of their own as they were attacked, beaten and robbed for days by the police, Christian populace spurred on by the colonial planters and their acolytes. Days later buses were sent into this tense criminal situation and the Rastafari people and Leonard P. Howell returned to Kingston where he purchased the old abandoned colonial estate at Pinnacle. At Pinnacle, The Rastafari Movement grew and was self-sufficient and self-reliant. However, the settlement was continually raided, robbed, burnt with many incarcerations by the colonial police with their ultimate aim being the fragmentation and destruction of the Rastafari Movement. The Colonial Records, Spanish Town archives The Kebra Nagast, the national epic of Ethiopia, is also taken as important amongst many Rastas. The Kebra Nagast is an Ethiopic text depicting the relationship between King Solomon and Queen of Sheba. Visit of Selassie I to Jamaica Haile Selassie I had already met with several Rasta elders in Addis Ababa in 1961, giving them gold medals, and had allowed West Indians of African descent to settle on his personal land in Shashamane in the 1950s. The first actual Rastafarian settler, Papa Noel Dyer, arrived in September 1965, having hitch-hiked all the way from England. Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on April 21, 1966. Approximately one hundred thousand Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Kingston airport, it having been announced that Selassie was coming to visit them.[71] They waited at the airport smoking a great amount of cannabis and playing drums. When Haile Selassie arrived at the airport he delayed disembarking from the aeroplane for an hour until Mortimer Planno, a well-known Rasta, personally welcomed him. From then on, the visit was a success. Rita Marley, Bob Marleys wife, converted to the Rastafari faith after seeing Haile Selassie; she has stated that she saw stigmata appear on his person, and was instantly convinced of his divinity.[72] The great significance of this event in the development of the Rastafari movement should not be underestimated. Having been outcasts in society, they gained a temporary respectability for the first time. By making Rasta more acceptable, it opened the way for the commercialisation of reggae, leading in turn to the further global spread of Rastafari. Because of Haile Selassies visit, April 21 is celebrated as Grounation Day. It was during this visit that Selassie I famously told the Rastafari community leaders that they should not immigrate to Ethiopia until they had first liberated the people of Jamaica. This dictum came to be known as liberation before repatriation.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:16:43 +0000
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