The story of the Rastafarians

December 3, 2017 4:27 AM

On the day Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica, a powerful storm broke out. The country, prior to the Emperor’s arrival, had been ravaged by famine and starvation. There had been no rain to water the crops for decades. The first time, in a long time, that it rained was when the Emperor set foot out of his aeroplane in that country. Jamaicans, from that time on, started to see the Emperor in a new light, they started to assume that maybe he was not just a person, but a messiah of some kind. Maybe even the messiah himself.

The above quote is a myth, but here are some facts about Rastafari. Before his coronation, Selassie was known as Ras Tafari Makonnen, from which the movement takes its name. Musician Bob Marley is the most well-known Rasta, and many of his songs have Rastafari themes.

posted by infini (20 comments total)

Maybe even the messiah himself.

As a non-Rastafarian Jamaican friend said to me years ago... Haile Unlikely!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:38 AM on December 3, 2017 [21 favorites]

One of Bob Marley's greatest tracks (IMHO) lifts its lyrics from Ras Tafari's 1963 speech at the UN. The speech, and the tune, are both relevant today.

Also: I love Alpha Blondy's version La Guerre, because reggae in French just works, for my ears.
posted by pompomtom at 5:52 AM on December 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

(sorry, that's terrible to emphasise the French. Alpha Blondy is just brilliant, whichever language he's using)
posted by pompomtom at 5:54 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

*reads the section on Women in Rastafari*

Sigh.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 5:56 AM on December 3, 2017 [12 favorites]

So that's where the rap group ILOVEMAKONNEN get their name? I was wondering about that; is US rappers presenting themselves as super-fans of a Finnish racing driver or something one of those blog memes you have to be an avocado-fed millennial to fully understand.
posted by acb at 5:57 AM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Him come with thunder and lightning
To clear the way
The whirlwind come
And blow them away
Keep cool
Keep coo-ool
King Rasta come now soon
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:01 AM on December 3, 2017

*reads the section on Women in Rastafari*

Oh, indeed. And don't even look into their views on homosexuality (hint: there are stones involved). This is a conservative religious sect we're talking about. They get a lot of press in the West because they inspired far better music than, say, the Southern Baptists.
posted by pompomtom at 6:03 AM on December 3, 2017 [21 favorites]

Rasta’s adoption of Haile Selassi feels similar to the Pan-African movement’s arbitrary selection of the west African language of Swahili as the ‘ancestral’ language of African Americans (like in Kwanzaa)* or the elevation of both the Egyptians and the Kingdom of Kush in Nubia; a desperate need for a history and a connection to Africa that had been torn away. The mocking they sometimes get seems particularly cruel given the circumstances.

It’s always struck me as strange that Rastas never moved much towards learning Amharic or converting to Ethiopian Orthodox, though.

* languages like Yoruba, Igbo, or Hausa would have been a more accurate choice.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:11 AM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Swahili, she said wiht a deep sigh, is an east African lingua franca of trade, that emerged on what was then known as the Swahili coast of the Indian Ocean, composed of Bantu, Arab, Gujarati, Hindi and various other bits and bobs from the traders that plied the oceans for centuries.

I think you meant to say Yoruba.
posted by infini at 7:19 AM on December 3, 2017 [9 favorites]

Right, on the other side of the continent from where most African slaves were taken.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:22 AM on December 3, 2017

arbitrary selection of the west east African language of Swahili as the ‘ancestral’ language of African Americans
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:30 AM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

That’s an editing typo, thanks. I know where Kenya is.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:32 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

So that's where the rap group ILOVEMAKONNEN get their name?

iLoveMakonnen is a solo act and Makonnen is his given name.
posted by wreckingball at 7:47 AM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

There's a small city called Sashamni in Ethiopia fill if Rastafarians, many of whom migrated to Ethiopia during Sallasie's time. They're completely culturally district from the rest of Ethiopia, of course, so ended up concentrated pretty tightly. My favorite cab driver in Nairobi - who goes by the name Rasta - made a bit of a pilgrimage there once...
posted by kaibutsu at 2:39 PM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

There are a contingent of Rastafari who are also Orthodox Christians or who belong to Black Israelite groups—strictly speaking, one can be a Rasta and also belong to a broader mainstream Christian group (or a para-Jewish black nationalist religious group).

And yes, I agree that the choices for Rastafari and general Afrocentric beliefs seem capricious at times. I remember a friend of mine talking with some Farrakhan-style/five-percenters/Nation of Islam Muslims in Chicago once about who in history was black (Cleopatra was, Lincoln was debatable).
posted by koavf at 2:40 PM on December 3, 2017

And yes, I agree that the choices for Rastafari and general Afrocentric beliefs seem capricious at times.

Unlike rational, white beliefs. Maybe you didn't mean to be offensive, but this is absolute horseshit.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:50 PM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't have any particular opinion about Cleopatra's racial makeup, but the idea of her being black isn't an unheard of fringe argument.

And the idea of Lincoln having African heritage has been around since the time of Lincoln.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:28 PM on December 3, 2017

Timely FPP; I just listened to the two-part episode on Haile Selassie on The Black History Podcast. I had no idea of the connection and it blew my mind.
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:47 PM on December 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

I passed through Shashemene once. The Rastas live in a compound on the edge of town, on land given to them by Haile Selassie, completely isolated from the rest of the community there. It seemed to me that they thought they were going home, but Ethiopia isn't what they expected, and now there's no going back.

A lot of Ethiopian people talk about Africa the same way some British people talk about Europe - like it's somewhere else. They do things their own way, have done for thousands of years. Culturally and even physically they have nothing in common with the Jamaican immigrants, and while they don't object to them being there, they don't seem too inclined to integrate them either.

All in all it just seemed like a sad place.
posted by Buck Alec at 3:04 AM on December 4, 2017

Of course Lincoln has African heritage: so does every human being. Either way, he was not black. I never said that white beliefs are rational (I have no clue what white beliefs even are), just that the claims of fringe pseudo-history in Afrocentric movements are sometimes so untenable as to be virtually random. If you somehow need to have some parity with pseudo-history from whites, then the Aryan Invasion theory is not really defensible and has been associated with atrocity. Is that better?
posted by koavf at 1:46 PM on December 4, 2017