HOMAGE TO THE ANCIENT RASTA PT 3

                HOMAGE TO THE ANCIENT RASTA    

                                             By Nzinga Nzinga

To Morgan Heritage, children of Denroy Morgan (Black Eagles). It is their song which provided the theme of this tribute to the Ancient Rastas. Also to their father, Denroy, whom I had the honour of meeting in Jamaica. Brother Denroy, I have enjoyed your songs tremendously. Blessed love!

♪♪Could you live thru what the ancient Rasta lived thru?         

Would you hold on to your faith if you’d been thru what they’ve been thru? ♪♪

--Could You Live Thru’? Morgan Heritage

Part 3

“Rasta brethren and sistren of today, would you hold on to your faith if you’d been thru what our Ancients been thru?” 

One of the prime factors that helped many present-day Rastas to hold on to their faith is that of the absolute dedication and commitment of the Elders or the Ancient Rastas to Rastafari. In the beginning, when Rastas first reared their natty dreads in Jamaica and orally presented their political, religious and cultural manifestos, there were as yet no uptown disciples. The followers of Jah Rastafari were practicing peaceful cohabitation in that they did not take up weapons against anyone. They separated themselves communally as best they could from the ‘vampire’ system they called ‘Babylon system’, but they were still subject to all the laws of the land. In fact they were subject to more unjust laws of the land than any other Jamaican tribe. 

The terrible thing about this is that the laws were made to keep them down and to promote people who do not look like them in colour and general appearance. Even though they were peaceful, their beliefs were such that the state saw them as heretical, belligerent and subversive. Their beliefs were untenable. They were absolutely unacceptable to the majority of Jamaicans, including those who were unmixed-black-skinned. But why should that come as a surprise? Rastas were talking and living ‘Africa’, at least their perception of Africa, and that was anathema to the majority of black people of predominantly African descent, who held firmly to the propaganda that Africa was a benighted and uncivilized continent of savage, barbaric, and cannibalistic tribes.

In earlier years many black Jamaicans of predominantly African ancestry had rejected Marcus Garvey and his allegedly revolutionary philosophy and opinions for ‘Blackman redemption through identity with his ancestral homeland Africa and even worse, repatriation thereto’. So again they wholeheartedly rejected the Rastas who were not only promoting disobedience to white supremacy and adherence to Garveyism, but also the hitherto new, unheard-of, dangerous and extremely heretical, idolatrous, pagan, irreverent and blasphemous attributing of divinity to a little black African King far, far away in Ethiopia.

These Rastas, in the most part, unschooled illiterates, these most marginalized blackest-of-the- black blacks, poorest of the poor people from the ghettoes and the rural areas, were taking these incredible steps without the permission of not only their white colonisers and their light-skinned sycophants, but also of their not so light-skinned and black-skinned yes-men-lackeys. A Rasta was called ‘blackheart man’, meaning wicked, heartless and criminal witchcraft man. The very idea that these black-skinned and so-called ‘blackheart’ nobodies were claiming that not only they, but also the majority of Jamaican people were Africans, was abhorrent to most Jamaicans. That must have hurt a great number of people who considered themselves anything but African. They might be black-skinned but they were by no stretch of the imagination African. Yet, it was a fact that 98% of Jamaicans were black, therefore Africans. 

Didn’t Peter Tosh, a latter-day Rasta, now an ancestor, sing in accents pure and sweet?

♪♪ “No matter where you come from
As long as you’re a blackman 
you’re  an African.
Don’t mind your nationality.
You’ve got the identity of an African.
If you ‘plexion high, high, high
If you ‘plexion low, low, low; 
If you ‘plexion in between.
Don’t mind your denomination 
That’s only segregation. 
If you go to Catholic;
If you go to Methodist,
If you go to Church of God,
As long as you’re a black man 
You’re an African. ♪♪

 (Thank you, Peter!)

Didn’t Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, that great Ghanaian, say?:

“All peoples of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world, are Africans and belong to the African nation.” 

The Ancient Rastas had no doubt as to their African identity and origin. They even went so far as to identify with the then Emperor of Ethiopia, His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I, as the true God of the black man. They were looking through their own African spectacles and what they saw was their God in the personality of the black African king of Ethiopia, a man in whose image they were created. Unlike the proselytizing whites, they were not anxious to convert other peoples to their Rasta Faith. Like Marcus Garvey, their concern was in finding their new theocratic ideal which was no longer the ideal of a white God or rather, the white man’s white God. Rastas could sing with confidence that their God was black and had a new and terrible name—that of JAH RASTAFARI. 

♪♪A new name Jah got and it terrible among men. ♪♪

                                              

 




 

To be continued

 All the images were taken from the Internet and I claim no copyright.