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The content of the present pages will be disapprea shortly
THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE (besides the rastafarians introduction below) HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR SISTER WEBSITE:
http://www.rootsreggaeclub.com/culture_reggae_afro/the_rastafarians/the_rastafarians_main.htm
INTRODUCTION TO THE RASTAFARIANS CULTURE AND HISTORY (see RASTAFARIANS FULL VERSION):
THE RASTAFARIANS:
Chapter 1 / Paradise Island
Who are the Rastafarians?
The Place, People and Language
The City of Kingston
The Rural Areas
Unemployment and Crime
Religion
Slave Religion in Jamaica
Missionary Religion
The Great Revival of 1860-1861
Afro-Christian Syncretism
Pentecostalism and Revivalism: A comparison
Who are the Rastafarians?
The Rastafarian cult is a messianic movement unique to Jamaica. It's members
belive that Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia is the Black Messiah
who appeared in the flesh for the redemption of all blacks exiled in the world
of white oppressors. The movement views Ethiopia as the promised land, the place
where Black people will be repatriated through a wholesale exodus from all Western
copuntries where they have been in exile (slavery). Repatriation is inevitalbe,
and the time awaits only the decision of Haile Selassie,. Known only to the
true belivers, the detail s of the actual departure are secret. In the past
some fantasies called for planes to the united states, and then ships from there
to Africa. Some envision the operation being launched from the shoreds of Jamaica
by at least ten British ships at a time, while others see the operation being
undertaken in Ethiopian vessels at Jamaican expense.
The destination of this great migration is also vague in the minds of some speculators.
The majority see Ethiopia as their homeland; others view Africa as the true
homeland. There is no unanimity about the destination. To many, Ethiopia means
Africa, while to others, Ethiopia is the promised land, though they will settle
for any part of the continent.
The author, who has observed the Rastafarians since 1946 and has carried out
systematic research among them from 1963 to 1966 (on which his first monograph
was based), later returned to Jamaica to study their development from 1966 to
the deaths of Haile Selassie and Bob Marley. An up-to-date assessment of the
movement may be stated as follows:
The present membership of the Rastafarian movement, including sympathizers,
may number three hundred thousand. No census has yet given an accurate account
of the membership, but a knowledgeable Rasta leader states tht six out of every
ten Jamaican are either Rastas or sympathizers.
The membership is young and has no individual leadership. Up to 80 percent of
those seen in the camps and on the streets are between the ages of seventeen
and and thirty-five. The leading brethren are mostly men from thirty-five to
fifty-five years of age. The older members are either ex-Garveyites or sympathizers
of his movement.
Most members are male. Women play an importtant role in Rastafarianism at present,
but the majority are followers of their husbands. In special meetings women
act as mistresses of songs or as secretaries, but these roles are changing rapidly.
The male assumes most of the responsibilities of the movment, though at present,
a large segment of the rastafarian women now sell their products such a knitted
clothing, basketsmats, brooms, art works, and other sundries.
until 1965, the membership was essentially lower class, but this is no longer
the case. Once considered "products of the slum,", the Rastas have
now penetrated the middle class.They are found among civils servants and the
elite; some are students at the prestigious University of the West Indies; some
are in the medical and legal professions and other upper-class occupations.
Based on the earlier research, the members were almost all of african stocks.
At present, the overwhelming majority of members still are, but there are also
Chinese, East Indians, Afro-Chinese, Afro-East Indians or Afro-Jews, mulatoes,
and a few whites. Every ethnic minority is now represented in the Rastafarian
camps.
The members are predominantly ex-Christians. About 90 percent of the members
interviewed were from Protestant of Catholic churches or Pentecostal sects.
The minority who said they had no church connection did acknowledge that they
came from Christian homes.
As a group of Rastafarians see jamaica as a land of oppression - Babylon. Their
only avenue of excape is by supernatural means or by seizing the power and creating
an utopia for the oppressed.
The Place, People and Language
The island of Jamaica is the third largest in size of the West Indian Islands
after Cuba and Haiti. Jamaica is 150 miles long and 52 miles wide, subtropical,
and land of warm weather without the extremes of climate common to the mainland
of the United States. Jamaican harbors are among the world's finest, and jamican
rivers add beauty and economic value to the island. Hills and mountains form
the center of the island, ranging from the gentle cockpit Mountains of the west
to the high John Crow and Blue Mountains of the east, with altitudes exceeding
seven thousands feet. These high mountains and the broad, easily drained plains
below provide diverity of climate and agriculture.
The population of Jamaica is presently estimated at a little less than two million
people, of which nearly a half-million now reside in Kingston, the capital and
largest city.
The distribution of people by racial origin can be summarized as follows: those
of African origin, 90 percent; Caucasians, about 1 percent; those of Chinese
descent, about 2 percent. Of the remaining 4 percent, the Jews and the Lebanese
are the largest identifiable groups. Thus the vast majority of Jamaicans are
currently f African or Afro-European descent. By contrast, the original inhabitants
of the island (when Colombusdiscovered it in 1494) were the Arawak Indians,
a homogeneous people completely different from any group living there now. Columbus'
arrival introduced the natives to the Europeans, a meeting which proved catastrophic
for the Arawak Indians: by the time the British conquered Jamaica in 1655 the
Arawaks were extinct.
English is the formal language of the island. The greater part of the masses,
however, speak a Jamaican dialect. Cassidy's Jamaica Talkportrays jamaica as
a place where "a pepperpot of language is concocted. " He observes
that Jamaica talk is not the same for every jamaican because of the vast spectrum
of dialects. Jamaica talk exists on two main fomrs which Cassidy illustrates
as lying at opposite ends of a scale. At one extreme is the type of jamaica
talk that emulates the london standard or educated model spoken among many of
the elite. At the other extreme is hte inherited talk of peasant and laborer
who remaing largely unaffected by education and its standards. Their speech
is what linguists call creaolized english; that is framgmented English speech
and sytax assimilated during the days of slavery and mixed with African influences.
This Anglo-African admixture continues to be spoken in much the same form today.
There is, though, a third dialectial element in Jamaica located in the middle
of the language scale where one discovers an increasing inclusion of locl elements
of jamaican rhythm and intonation of workds that the Londoner would have no
need to know. These characteristics of het language evolved within an island
population, which Cassidy calles Jamaicanism. He defines this term by citing
five main divisions:
1: Retention, which includes English workds now rare or poetic that are still
in common use in Jamaica
2: New formations which are in turn subdivided into alterations, compositions,
and creations.
3: Borrowings which are French and Portuguese words which came into English
as early as the eighteenth century.
4: Onogatopoeic echoisms
5: Usage of words which, though not exclusively Jamaican, is the preferred term
on the island
Speaking of the greatest influence on Jamaica-talk, Cassidy concludes: Of non-british influences it is obvious that the African is the largest and most profound; it appears not only in the vocabulary, but as powerfully affected both pronunciation and grammar. We may feel fairly certain about two undred and thirty loan-words from various African languages; and if the numerous compounds and derivatives were added, and the large number of untraced terms which are at least quasi african in form, the total would easily be more than four hundred. Even iat its most, the African element in the vocabulary is larger than all the other non-english ones together.
Cassidy's studies, which were carried out in the 1950s, made no mention of
the influence of the Rastafarian movement on Jamaica-talk. Since the 1950s,
a new linguistic change has traken place in Jamaica. This is what we may call
a Rasta dialect highly symbolic and radically revolutionary. Teh development
of this new linguistic component will be discussed in Chapter 5.
Education in Jamaica has generally followed the British pattern. Though understandable
from a historical perspective, the system has created much confusion in teh
social patterns of the jamaican people. During the colonial period (and to a
great extent to the present day), children were taught about the English culture
without attempting to relate it to the environment in which they lived. Madeline
Kerr, in her analysis of five schools, points out that the subject matter was
basically meaningless to the children. Central to the curriculum was the Bible,
taught from a strictly fundamentalist point of view. Children memorized enormous
passages of prose and poetry and learned to read by changing passages from books.
Discipline in the schools was often harsh, and although some teachers restricted
the amount of lashing, beating was the rule, not the exception.
Prior to independence (and even today), children attended elementary school
up to the age of eleven when they were expected to pass a common entrance examination.
The completion of thie rest entitled the child to enter an approved school until
he or shei pased the general certificate of Education. This certificate admitted
the child in some cases to to a university.
One of teh great problems of education in jamaica is the lack of proper training
of teachers, the majority of whom, until recently, reached a standard scarcely
higher than the American high school.
With the coming of self-government there has been a remarkable increase in educational
facilities. In 1944, primary school teachers numbered less than three thousands;
by 1960 the figure had grown to 315.000. Great emphasis was also placed on secondary
education. While there were only twenty-three secondary schools in 1944, by
1960 the number had reached forty-one. Recently, compulsory educatoin has been
instituted by the government. But the future of Jamaican educatoin is in a deplorable
state. Teachers are poorly paid, and with the economic downturn due to the closing
of the bauxite companies and the weakness of the Jamaican dollar, high inflation
has cuased the closing of elementary and secondary schools, and even of one
teacher's college.
The University Collegeof the West Indies (now the University of the West Indies)was
founded in 1948 at Mona, near Kingston, with an enrollment of thirty-three students.
Current rnrollment exceeds five thousand. A number of vocational and technical
schools have been constructed on the island to encourage and meet the demand
for mechanical and technical skills in a developing nation. These upper-level
educational institutions provide an excellent education but their number and
capacity to meet the needs of an exploding population are grossly inadequate.
Jamaica's economy is basically agricultural, employing over 40% of the island's
labour force. Before the second World War, agriculture accounted for 36 % of
the island's total exports in the form of sugar, bananas, and rum and comprised
four-fifths of the island's export revenue. By 1961, however, agriculture provided
only 13% of the total income. In the past ten years, rapid developments have
taken place in mining, manufacturing, and tourism. All three industries presently
are experiencing the uncertainties of worldwide inflation and recessio. Thus
the future of the Jamaican economy will demand courageous leadership and sound
fiscal planning.
A striking characteristic of Jamaica's agriculture is the large number of small
famers. There are 159,000 small farmers of whom 113,000 work less than 5 acres.
A recent report states that the agricultural pattern of Jamaican farmers has
not changed in the last 100 years, largely due to lack of land and primitive
techniques. The former government was dedicated to rectifying this imbalance,
and new laws have been instituted to make unused lands available to the small
farmers. At present, efforts are being focused on increasing agricultural exports.
THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE (besides the rastafarians introduction below) HAS
BEEN MOVED TO OUR SISTER WEBSITE:
http://www.rootsreggaeclub.com/culture_reggae_afro/the_rastafarians/the_rastafarians_main.htm
INTRODUCTION TO THE RASTAFARIANS CULTURE AND HISTORY (see RASTAFARIANS FULL VERSION):
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