Reggae and Rastafarian culture have long gone hand in hand. The most obvious example of this I can think of is the song By the Rivers of Babylon, an old Jewish song about the longing for Israel that was repurposed to be about longing for the ancestral home of Africa and the place that it has in Afro-Caribbean culture. It was a minor hit in the UK for a Jamaican Reggae group in the 1970s and a much bigger hit for Bony M in the same decade. In the Melodians’ version, less so the Bony M version as that was decontextualised from Rastafarianism with the group being the project of a German record producer, of the song Zion ceases to refer to the Jewish homeland of Israel and the song becomes about longing for a home in Africa that the ancestors of Afro-Caribbean people were taken away from as slaves drawing a direct comparison between the diasporas of both peoples. Rastafarianism has its roots in the prophetic writings of journalist and writer Marcus Garvey who wrote that Afro-Caribbean people should ‘look to Africa for the crowning of a black King, he shall be the redeemer’.[1] The black King that is being referred to is believed to be Haile Selassie whose 1930 coronation as Emperor of Ethiopia was seen to be the fulfilment of said prophecy and who was known as Ras Tafari before ascending the throne.[2] Though it’s connection to Haile Selassie and Ethiopia would break down with Garvey being highly critical of the Ethiopian monarch during the Second World War Rastafarianism did not go away, in fact it had a profound affect on black Britain. In the British Caribbean colonies Afro-Caribbean citizens were taught that they were British subjects and that Britain was the ‘mother country’ instilling a sense of national pride to the aforementioned ‘mother country’ that stood in stark contrast to the racism faced when the Windrush generation arrived in Britain, answering the call that had come from Britain to help rebuild after the Second World War. In Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multicultural Britain by Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips there are interviews with men who migrated to Britain on Empire Windrush that show both hope for a better future and acceptance but also the harsh reception they faced upon arrival with ‘they don’t belong here’ and ‘why don’t they go home’ being a familiar refrain coupled with a grudging acceptance that they were there to do a job but never a true acceptance of their presence in Britain.[3] Faced with such a reception there was a turn away from idolising Great Britain as a benevolent ‘mother country’ towards Rastafarianism as a cultural heading, particuarly among second generation migrants who could not comprehend their parents’ admiration of the country that had failed to embrace them and was often outright hostile.
[1] Marcus Garvey as quoted in Eddie Chambers, Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2017) 77
[2] Eddie Chambers, Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain (London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2017) 78
[3] Mike Philips, Trevor Philips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multicultural Britain (London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998) 81-82
From Local to Global: The History of Music in London Group 2 