The reign of the Garvey movement, as Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., wrote, "awakened a race consciousness that made Harlem felt around the world. "^2 Popular Hero Borne along on the tide of black popular culture, Garvey's memory has attained the status of a folk myth. While the 1987 centennial of Garvey's birth will be marked by formal ceremonies honoring his memory, on a more dynamic plane, Garvey is daily celebrated and re-created as a hero through the storytelling faculty of the black oral tradition. As the embodiment of that oral tradition transmuted into musical performance, Jamaica's reggae music exhibits an amazing fixation with the memory of Garvey.
Rastafari is a young, Africa-centred religion which developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, following the coronation of Haile Selassie I as King of Ethiopia in 1930. Rastafarians believe Haile Selassie I is God and that he will return to the African members of the black community who are living in exile as the result of colonisation and the slave trade. (www.bbc.co.uk) Marcus Garvey a political activist developed the idea of Rastafari ideology because he wanted to improve the status of his fellow black people. There are approximately one million people worldwide adherents of Rastafari as a faith. The 2001 census found 5,000 Rastafarians living in England and Wales (bbc.co.uk) Rastafarians are known by different names such as Rasta, sufferers, locks men, and dreadlocks or dreads.
Rastafari developed in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1920s and 30s. In an environment of great poverty, depression, racism and class discrimination, the Rasta message of black pride, freedom from oppression, and the hope of return to the African homeland was gratefully received. The Rastafarian movement began with the teachings of Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), a black Jamaican who led a "Back to Africa" movement. He taught that Africans are the true Israelites and have been exiled to Jamaica and other parts of the world as divine punishment. The Rastafarian movement first became visible in Jamaica in the 1930s, when peaceful communities were founded in the Kingston slums.
O.e.-was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was enslaved as a child, purchased his freedom, and worked as an author, merchant, and explorer in South America, the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, and the United Kingdom, where he settled by 1792. Mid Pass-The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa[1] were shipped to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials,[2] which would be transported
To really understand what the rastafarians are all about; let’s take a brief look at their history. The movement began back in the 1930’s in Kingston Jamaica under the inspiration and teachings of world renowned Marcus Mosiah Garvey. During a time of struggle, racism, “class-ism,” and discrimination against blacks, Garvey went about the business of teaching and enlightening blacks that to improve their condition, they must establish their own “world” back in Africa On November 2, 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned emperor of Ethiopia and took on the name Haile Selassie (Might of the Trinity) plus additional titles including “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah,” and “Elect of God and King of the Kings of Ethiopia.” This was when the rastafarians who had been listening to Marcus Garvey for a while, became convinced that he, Ras Tafari Makonnen, was the one the African Messiah who had come and liberate all Africans from their oppressors. This belief led to the birth of the Rastafarian movement. Leader Leonard Howell took control and led the group to initiate six fundamentals principles of Rastafarian belief.
The Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together, and survived by growing vegetables and hunting. “Suriname is located on the northeast coast of South Africa and is bounded by Guyana on the west, on the south by Brazil. The country is roughly the size of the state of Georgia with unexplored forested highlands and flat Atlantic coast, with a tropical climate that produces heavy rains.” (SIUE Theatre Program) The Maroons in Suriname raided plantations, and during these attacks they would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slave masters, and invite other outsiders to join their communities. The Maroon settlements possessed an outsider identity and sometimes
The Rastafarian Movement has its origins during the eighteenth century; British landowners needed a large workforce and imported several African slaves to Jamaica to work on sugar plantations. These slaves fought to keep their African traditions. (Abram, Hamann, “The Rastafarian Movement”) Rastafari theology was greatly influenced by Marcus Garvey, when he began his teachings in the 1920’s, and led the “Back to Africa Movement”. In 1927 Garvey once said to his followers that their king shall be crowned in Africa. In 1930 a man named Ras Tafari Makonnen became emperor of Ethiopia; at his coronation he took the name Haile Selassi, “Might of the Trinity”.
The cry is raised all over the world today of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the American, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans- do you think it is unreasonable that we, the blacks of the world, should raise the cry of Africa for the Africans?” Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940),[1] was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and speaker who was a constant supporter of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). [2] He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Marcus Garvey was a figure in spreading the awareness of black consciousness and nationalism. Marcus Garvey was a “very vocal man who was extremely active in
In the following extract David Coplan and Bennetta Jules-Rosette , “…explore the ways in which Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, transformed from church hymn into protest song.” King and Vos (2009:78) . The scholars on this subject also explore how the song was spread throughout the continent of Africa because of freedom fighters who went for exile . From the middle of the nineteenth century, an emergent urban black intellectual elite used choral music to articulate the experiences and aspirations of their people. The loss of independence
Marcus Garvey ignited a philosophy entitled “Africa for Africans” which was a Black self-empowerment movement that proposed all Blacks should move back to Africa – the home of their ancestors (Erskine 30). Marcus Garvey proclaimed, “Look to Africa where a Black King shall arise – this will be the day of your deliverance” (Erskine 60). Those who followed Garvey’s teachings took it as a revelation from God when Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 (Culture & Religion). These followers viewed Ras Tafari Makonnen, later known as Haile Selassie I, as the living God of the Black race (Culture & Religion 1). “The name Rastafari is taken from Ras Tafari, the pre-regnal title of Haile Selassie I, composed of Amharic Ras (literally "Head," an Ethiopian title equivalent to Duke), and Haile Selassie's pre-regnal given name, Tafari” (Wikipedia 1).