Rastafari

• 1. Introduction

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  Rastafari is a religion organised around a man who told an interviewer in 1967 that treating him as divine was a mistake. Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, had been asked about the belief that he was the Second Coming of Jesus. His answer was direct: "I have heard of this idea. I also met certain Rastafarians. I told them clearly that I am a man, that I am mortal, and that I will be replaced by the oncoming generation, and that they should never make a mistake in assuming or pretending that a human being is emanated from a deity."

  The believers did not walk away. An estimated 700,000 to 1 million Rastafari now live around the world.

  How does a faith survive when the figure at its heart disowns it? Who are the people who call themselves Rastas, and why do they name Western society Babylon? What happens when they gather, why do so many wear dreadlocks, and how did a style of Jamaican music carry their ideas to audiences far from the island?

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• 2. Many Mansions

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  The sociologist of religion Peter B. Clarke noticed a paradox. The conviction that Rastafari has no dogma, he wrote, "is so strong that it has itself become something of a dogma." Rastas treat personal experience and intuition as the test of any belief or practice. For that reason no Rasta can rule which teachings are orthodox and which are not. Attempts to summarise the faith have never been given the standing of a catechism or creed.

  The name itself points to a man. Ras Tafari Makonnen was the title Haile Selassie held before he took the throne. "Ras" is a noble rank in Ethiopian Semitic languages, comparable to a duke or prince, while Tafari Makonnen was his personal name. Nobody knows why the earliest followers built the religion's name from it. The same word names the believers. Many outsiders say "Rastafarianism," but many Rastafari dislike that term, because the suffix suggests fixed doctrine and an institution, two things they want to avoid.

  Scholars have pinned many labels on the faith. Some call it an Abrahamic religion, others a new religious movement, a sect, a cult or a revitalisation movement. Because it arose in Jamaica, it has also been called Afro-Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean. The scholars Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert describe it as "a Creole religion, rooted in African, European, and Indian practices and beliefs." Ennis B. Edmonds suggested it was emerging as a world religion, not through the size of its membership but through how widely it has spread. Many Rastas reject the word religion and prefer "a way of life", a "philosophy" or a "spirituality". Darren J. N. Middleton proposed speaking of "a plethora of Rasta spiritualities" instead of a single phenomenon.

  A British Industrial Tribunal gave the question a legal answer in 1989. Applying the Race Relations Act 1976, it concluded that Rastafarians could be treated as an ethnic group. Its reasons were a long shared heritage that set them apart, their own cultural traditions, a common language and a common religion.

  Most Rastas avoid a central hierarchy, fearing it would copy the structures of Babylon. Their stress on the divinity inside each person pushes the same way. Instead of resembling Christian denominations, the groups work more like the cells found in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería and Jamaica's Revival Zion. Sub-divisions are called houses or mansions, echoing a line from the Gospel of John in the King James Bible, where Jesus says, "In my father's house are many mansions." Splitting into houses with no single leader also made the faith more resilient when Jamaica's government opposed it in the early decades.

  The House of Nyabinghi is probably the largest. It gathers traditional and militant Rastas who want the movement to stay close to how it looked in the 1940s. They insist that Haile Selassie was Jah, the Rasta name for God, and the reincarnation of Jesus. They treat dreadlocks as indispensable and stress patriarchal gender roles. Writing in 1983, the scholar Ernest Cashmore called them "vehemently anti-white." They refuse to compromise with Babylon, and they criticise reggae musicians such as Bob Marley for working with the commercial music industry.

  In 1958 Emanuel Charles Edwards founded the Ethiopia Africa Black International Congress, the root of the Bobo Ashanti. He led a commune at Bull Bay until he died in 1994. The group follows a rigid ethos shaped by Mosaic Law. Edwards taught a new trinity of Haile Selassie as the living God, himself as the Christ, and the activist Marcus Garvey as the prophet. Male members divide into priests, who conduct services, and prophets, who join reasoning sessions. Women face more restrictions here than elsewhere in Rastafari. Menstruation and childbirth make them impure, so they may not cook for men. Members are recognisable by long flowing robes and turbans. They long avoided white people, though by the early twenty-first century the group had grown more welcoming of outsiders.

  Vernon Carrington founded the Twelve Tribes of Israel in Kingston in 1968 and proclaimed himself the reincarnation of the prophet Gad. Followers call him Prophet Gad, Brother Gad or Gadman. The house is usually seen as the most liberal and the closest to Christianity, which earns its members the nickname Christian Rastas. They hold that Jesus is the only saviour and honour Selassie without calling him the second coming. Members are sorted into twelve groups by the Hebrew calendar month of their birth, and each month is tied to a colour, a body part and a mental function. Everyone is asked to read a chapter of the Bible each day. Dreadlocks and an ital diet of natural food are praised but optional, and people of any racial background may join. The house peaked in the 1970s, drawing artists, musicians and middle-class followers, Marley among them. That earned its members the labels uptown Rastas and middle-class Rastas.

  After Carrington died in 2005, an executive council with equal numbers of men and women took over the Twelve Tribes. As of 2010 it was the largest of the centralised Rasta groups. It remains headquartered in Kingston, and it established the Rasta community in Shashamane, Ethiopia.

  Abuna Foxe founded the Church of Haile Selassie, Inc., which operates much like a mainstream church. It has a hierarchy of officials, weekly services and Sunday schools, all aimed at winning wider respectability. Fulfilled Rastafari is a multi-ethnic house that has grown during the twenty-first century largely through the Internet. Its members treat dreadlocks and the ital diet as personal choices.

  Jamaica holds the largest Rastafari population, but small communities exist in most of the world's major population centres. Most Rastafari are of African descent, and some groups accept only black members, although non-black groups have emerged. Whatever their house, nearly all of them argue from the same book.

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• 3. Roots and Resistance

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  Between the 16th and 19th centuries, over ten million enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Under 700,000 of them were settled in the British colony of Jamaica. Britain abolished slavery on the island in 1834, yet racial prejudice stayed woven through Jamaican society. Rastafari grew out of that legacy.

  The Great Revival of 1860-61 drew many Afro-Jamaicans into churches. Pentecostal missionaries from the United States then arrived in growing numbers, with arrivals peaking in the 1920s. Two older currents with roots in the 18th century mattered just as much. The Back to Africa idea urged people of the diaspora to resettle on the continent, and colonies were founded in Sierra Leone and Liberia. From Liberia, the Christian preacher Edward Wilmot Blyden promoted African pride and the preservation of African customs and institutions. The second current, Ethiopianism, gave special status to Ethiopia because the Bible mentions it. Its followers treated the name Ethiopia as a synonym for Africa as a whole.

  Marcus Garvey spent much of his adult life in the United States and Britain. He backed global racial separatism and wanted part of the diaspora to relocate to Africa. W. E. B. Du Bois and other civil rights activists favoured integration and opposed him. Garveyism faded as a mass movement during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A rumour later claimed that in 1916 he told followers to "look to Africa" for the crowning of a black king, but the quote was never verified. What is documented is a play. In August 1930 his Coronation of an African King was staged in Kingston, with a fictional Prince Cudjoe of Sudan as its monarch, anticipating a real coronation later that year.

  Garvey knew of Rastafari but took a largely negative view of it. He also turned on Haile Selassie, calling him "a great coward" who rules a "country where black men are chained and flogged." Rastas nonetheless hold Garvey in great esteem, and many regard him as a prophet.

  When Haile Selassie was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, he became the first sovereign monarch crowned in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1891 and the first Christian one since 1889. Some Jamaican clergymen declared the coronation proof that he was the black messiah they believed the Book of Revelation, the Book of Daniel and the Psalms had foretold. Over the following years, the street preachers Leonard Howell, Archibald Dunkley, Robert Hinds and Joseph Hibbert went further and proclaimed him the returned Jesus. They began in Kingston, and the message spread across 1930s Jamaica, especially among poor communities battered by the Great Depression. Clarke judged that "to all intents and purposes this was the beginning" of the movement.

  Leonard Howell became the early movement's leading figure. He preached that black Africans were superior to white Europeans and that Afro-Jamaicans owed loyalty to Haile Selassie rather than King George V. Colonial authorities arrested him for sedition in 1934, and he spent two years in prison. After his release he founded the Ethiopian Salvation Society. In 1939 he formed a Rasta community called Pinnacle in Saint Catherine Parish. Police feared he was plotting an armed rebellion and raided Pinnacle repeatedly. It closed in 1954, and Howell was committed to a mental hospital.

  Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in 1936, and Haile Selassie went into exile. The invasion drew international condemnation and growing sympathy for the Ethiopian cause. In 1937 the emperor created the Ethiopian World Federation, which opened a Jamaican branch later in the decade. Allied forces drove the Italians out in 1941, and Selassie returned to his throne. Many Rastas saw that return as the fulfilment of a prophecy in the Book of Revelation.

  Through the 1950s the movement grew quickly in Jamaica and spread to other Caribbean islands, the United States and the United Kingdom. Its appeal lay mainly among the lower classes, and for its first thirty years it stood in conflict with the authorities. Rastas viewed the government, police, bureaucracy, professional classes and established churches as instruments of Babylon. Arrests for cannabis possession were common. A more militant strand emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, led by the House of Youth Black Faith, based largely in West Kingston. Backlash intensified after a practitioner allegedly killed a woman in 1957.

  In March 1958 the first Rastafarian Universal Convention met at Back-o-Wall in Kingston. Afterwards, militant Rastas tried to seize the city in Haile Selassie's name and failed. Later that year they tried again in Spanish Town. Cashmore wrote that the Rastas became "folk devils" in Jamaican society. In 1959 Claudius Henry, a self-declared prophet who founded the African Reform Church, sold thousands of tickets for a ship he said would carry people to Africa. Many buyers were Rastas. The ship never arrived, and he was charged with fraud. In 1960 he was sentenced to six years for conspiring to overthrow the government. His son, accused of belonging to a paramilitary cell, was executed, which seemed to confirm public fears of Rasta violence.

  The Coral Gardens incident of 1963 began as a skirmish between police and Rastas. It left several people dead and led to a wider roundup of practitioners. In 1964 the government passed tougher cannabis laws. Haile Selassie himself visited Jamaica for the first time in 1966, at the government's invitation, and thousands of Rastas gathered at the airport to meet him.

  The 1960s brought routinisation. The Rastafarian Movement Association launched the first official Rastafarian newspaper, Rasta Voice. Some Rastas began to read salvation as mental decolonisation, an embrace of African approaches to life, rather than a physical return. Membership widened beyond the poor to include students and professional musicians. In 1968 the Guyanese black nationalist academic Walter Rodney lectured to the Rasta community and later published his thoughts as the pamphlet Groundings. Many Rastas, like Rodney, were influenced by the American Black Power movement. When it declined, Rastafari filled the gap for many young black people.

  Michael Manley, Jamaica's prime minister in the 1970s, borrowed Rasta imagery to win votes and courted Marley and other reggae musicians. He called Rastas a "beautiful and remarkable people" and carried a cane he said was a gift from Haile Selassie. Political parties followed his lead with Rasta language and symbols, and the growing tourist industry sold reggae and Rasta imagery as Jamaican heritage. In the 1980s a Rasta, Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah, became a senator in the Jamaican Parliament.

  Marley's death in 1981 helped dampen enthusiasm. During the 1980s the number of Rastas in Jamaica fell, as Pentecostal and other Charismatic Christian groups proved better at attracting young recruits. Several prominent Rastas became Christians. Two of them, Judy Mowatt and Tommy Cowan, maintained that Marley had converted to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in his final days.

  The first international assembly of Rastafari groups took place in Toronto, Canada, in 1982. Later conferences and workshops helped build global networks. From the 1990s Jamaica saw organised Rasta politics, including campaigns to legalise cannabis and parties such as the Jamaican Alliance Movement and the Imperial Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated Political Party. None won more than minimal electoral support. In 1995 the Rastafari Centralization Organization was set up in Jamaica in an attempt to organise the whole community.

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• 4. Jah, Scripture, and Selassie

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  The scholar Michael Barnett called Rastafari "an Afrocentralized blend of Christianity and Judaism." Like Christians, Rastas place the Bible at the center of their belief, and they often read it literally. They see it as a true record of early black African history and of their place as God's favoured people. It unlocks past, present and future for them, and it is also a source book for explaining their own practices. Most rank the final book, Revelation, as the most important, because they see it speaking directly to the world's present situation.

  Many Rastas believe the Bible was first written on stone in the Ethiopian language of Amharic, contrary to scholarly accounts of how it was compiled. They hold that its meaning was warped by mistranslation and by deliberate manipulation from people who wanted to deny black Africans their history. They also read it as cryptographic, full of hidden meanings. Its true teachings, they say, come through intuition and meditation on the "book within", which lets them commune with God.

  Because they distrust the Bible's transmission, Rastas turn to other texts that illuminate African history. These include Leonard Howell's 1935 work The Promised Key, Robert Athlyi Rogers' 1924 book Holy Piby, and Fitz Balintine Pettersburg's Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, from the 1920s. Many also use the Kebra Nagast, a 14th-century Ethiopian text, as a lens for interpreting the Bible.

  Psalm 68, verse 4, of the Authorised King James Bible supplies the name Jah. It is an Anglicised, poetic form of the Hebrew name of God and a shortened version of Jehovah. Rastas worship this single God as immanent, present inside every person. The aphorism "God is man and man is God" captures the idea, and Rastas speak of "knowing" Jah instead of merely "believing" in him. The aim is to narrow the distance between humanity and divinity, which makes Rastafari mystical. It also differs from Kumina and Convince, other African diaspora religions, where outside spirits are invited into the body.

  Jesus holds an important place, though not the traditional Christian one. Rastas reject the image of a white European Jesus. They believe he was a black African and that the white Jesus was a false god. Many see Christianity as the creation of the white man, arguing that oppressors and oppressed cannot share the same God. Some say the God worshipped by most white Christians is really the Devil. A recurring claim holds that the Pope is Satan or the Antichrist. Christian preachers are often called deceivers, and Christianity is accused of "mental enslavement". Many Rastas find the face of a savior elsewhere, in a crowned African monarch.

  The nineteenth chapter of Revelation is where many Rastas, though not all, locate Haile Selassie as the Second Coming of Jesus. From that reading follow other titles for him: the messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, God in human form, and "the living God". Some place him within a Trinity alongside God as Creator and the Holy Spirit, which they call "the Breath within the temple". They point to descent from the royal line of King David, and to his Makonnen dynasty's claim of descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

  The Twelve Tribes of Israel rejects the idea that Selassie was the Second Coming, arguing that the event has yet to occur. Others see him as embodying the essence of Jesus' teachings without being the literal reincarnation. In this view he is a messenger or emissary of God, not God himself. Some who hold it call the deification of a human being naive, ignorant or even dangerous. Various Rastas have moved from believing he was God incarnate to seeing him as something distinct.

  His coronation title was "King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah." Rastas add "Almighty God", "Judge and Avenger", "King Alpha and Queen Omega", "Returned Messiah", "Elect of God" and "Elect of Himself". He also stands as a symbol of their positive affirmation of Africa as a source of spiritual and cultural heritage.

  While he reigned, many Jamaican Rastas professed that he would never die. The Derg, a military body, overthrew him in 1974, and he died in 1975. For many practitioners this was a crisis of faith, and some left the movement. Others found new answers. Some said he had not died at all and called reports of his death Western misinformation, noting that no corpse had been produced. In fact his body lay buried beneath his palace and went undiscovered until 1992. Another view accepted that the body had perished but held that his inner essence lived on as a spiritual force. A third held that his death mattered little, since he had only been a "personification" of Jah and not Jah himself.

  His grandson Ermias Sahle Selassie has said there is "no doubt that Haile Selassie did not encourage the Rastafari movement." The emperor described himself throughout his life as a devout Christian. Critics cite his denials as proof that Rasta theology is mistaken. Some Rastas turn the argument around, reading the Gospel of Luke to suggest that his denials show he really was God incarnate. Fulfilled Rastafari takes a third path: it accepts his statements about himself and worships Jesus through the example he set. For all of them, the question of where black people belong matters more than any ruling on his identity.

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• 5. Babylon and Zion

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  Between 597 and 538 BCE, the Old Testament places the Israelites in captivity in the Mesopotamian city of Babylon, exiled from their homeland. Rastas borrow the name for Western society and compare that exile to the African diaspora living outside Africa. European colonialism and global capitalism count as manifestations of Babylon, and police and soldiers are its agents. Suffering is a major word in Rasta speech. Babylon is blamed for the Atlantic slave trade and for continuing poverty in the diaspora. Many Rastas read scripture as saying that enslavement and exploitation punished black Africans for failing to live up to their status as Jah's chosen people. Some criticise the division of Africa into nation-states as a Babylonian development and distrust capitalist extraction of the continent's resources. Their rallying cry is "Chant down Babylon". When white-dominated society dismisses their beliefs as false, Rastas take it as confirmation that they are right.

  Zion, for Rastas, is the opposite pole. The word comes from the Bible, where it means an idealised Jerusalem, and Rastas apply it to Ethiopia or to Africa more broadly. English Bibles often use "Ethiopia" for Africa, and Rastas in Ghana describe themselves as already living within it. Others call Jamaica Zion, or treat it as a state of mind. For the movement's first three decades, repatriation was a pressing aim. Rastas lobbied the Jamaican government and the United Nations to oversee resettlement, and some organised their own passage to the continent. Critics called the migration of the entire diaspora implausible, since no African country would welcome it.

  By the fourth decade the desire for physical return had faded, a shift influenced by watching the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. Many Rastas came to understand the return as the restoration of pride and self-confidence in their black African descent. The phrase "liberation before repatriation" took hold. Some now try to transform Western society so they can live in it more comfortably, though many still stress physical resettlement.

  Peter Clarke described Rastafari as "concerned above all else with black consciousness, with rediscovering the identity, personal and racial, of black people." The movement began among Afro-Jamaicans who wanted to replace the dominant British colonial culture with an identity based on African heritage. It decenters Europe and whiteness, aims to purge any belief in black inferiority and white superiority, and endorses Pan-Africanism. Rastas identify with the ancient Israelites and believe that black Africans broadly, or Rastas in particular, are their descendants or reincarnations. They hold that this chosen status brings a covenant and a special responsibility, and that the true identity has been lost and must be reclaimed. Many also deny that contemporary Jews descend from the ancient Israelites.

  Rastas hold no uniform view on race. Black supremacy was a theme early on, and the religion has been accused of racism. That belief has waned since at least the 1970s, and non-black Rastas are now widely accepted. Some cite a 1963 speech by Haile Selassie in support of racial acceptance. A few sects insist that white Europeans can never be legitimate Rastas. Others hold that an African identity depends on an African "attitude" or "spirit", not on skin.

  In the 1980s the scholar Leonard E. Barrett met Jamaican Rastas who thought that practitioners who died had not been faithful to Jah. He suggested this came from the movement's large youthful membership, which had seen very few Rastas die. Traditionally many believed in eternal life, and another common view is that the righteous may be reincarnated. Rastas have long avoided death and funerals, so many received Christian funerals arranged by their relatives, since the faith has no established funeral rites. More recent or moderate strands often treat death as a natural part of life. Unlike other African diaspora religions, Rastafari generally avoids ancestor veneration.

  Rastafari is also millenarian. Many practitioners expect a Day of Judgment in which Babylon is overthrown and the Rastas, as the chosen few, survive. A millennium of peace, justice and happiness would follow, with the righteous living in Africa. In the 1980s many Rastas expected the Day of Judgment to arrive around the year 2000. A common view then was that white people would wipe themselves out in nuclear war, leaving black Africans to rule the world, which they argued the Book of Daniel had prophesied.

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• 6. Groundings and Ganja

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  Rastafari has no professional priesthood, because believers see no need for a mediator between the worshipper and Jah. It does have "elders", an honorific for those with a good reputation. Elders do not necessarily hold administrative roles, but they often help interpret current events through scripture and trade messages through a network to plan events.

  A grounding is a gathering that builds bonds between like-minded practitioners, usually in a commune or yard under an elder. The elder keeps discipline and can ban individuals from attending. Numbers range from a handful to several hundred. People play drums, chant, sing hymns, recite poetry and often smoke ganja. Most groundings are men only, though some Rasta women have formed all-female circles. Meetings open and close with prayers asking Jah to help the vulnerable and needy, calling for the destruction of the Rastas' enemies, and ending in adoration.

  A central activity at a grounding is "reasoning", a discussion of the religion's principles and their bearing on current events. It is meant to be non-combative, although listeners can point out flaws in an argument. Participants share revelations that came to them through meditation and dreams. Each contributor is supposed to push the boundaries of understanding until the whole group gains insight. Reasoning also reassures Rastas that their beliefs are right.

  The largest groundings were called "groundations" or "grounations" in the 1950s, and were later renamed Nyabinghi Issemblies, after a mythical African queen. They often fall on dates tied to Ethiopia and Haile Selassie: Ethiopian Christmas on the 7th of January, the 21st of April, the day of his visit to Jamaica, his birthday on the 23rd of July, Ethiopian New Year on the 11th of September, and his coronation day on the 2nd of November. Some Rastas also mark Jamaica's Emancipation Day on the 1st of August and Marcus Garvey's birthday on the 17th of August.

  Nyabinghi Issemblies usually take place in rural areas, in the open air or in temporary "temples" or "tabernacles". An elder who wants to sponsor one needs approval from other elders and enough resources. The assembly lasts between three and seven days. By day, people prepare food, smoke ganja and reason. At night they drum and dance around bonfires. Rastas travel from a wide area, including from other countries, and the gathering builds a feeling of collective belonging.

  The principal ritual of Rastafari is smoking ganja, also called marijuana or cannabis. Rastas call the plant callie, Iley, "the herb", "the holy herb", "the grass" and "the weed". It is smoked mainly at groundings, though some smoke informally elsewhere, and some do so so often that other Rastas find it excessive. Others drink it as tea, use it as a spice or put it in medicine. Not all Rastas use it, and some abstainers say they have already reached a higher consciousness.

  Rastas regard cannabis as a sacrament. They argue that the Bible promotes it in Genesis, Psalms and Revelation. They credit it with healing properties and with inducing "peace and love". They also say it fosters introspection that lets the smoker discover inner divinity. Some believe its smoke acts as an incense that counteracts immoral practices in society.

  The usual form is a large hand-rolled cigarette called a spliff, often rolled while a prayer is offered to Jah and lit only after the prayer ends. At other times Rastas use a water pipe called a chalice, in styles known as kutchies, chillums and steamers. The pipe is passed counter-clockwise around the circle.

  Historians offer several explanations for how cannabis entered the faith. By the 8th century, Arab traders had brought the plant to Central and Southern Africa. In the 19th century, enslaved Bakongo people arrived in Jamaica and founded Kumina, which smoked cannabis in ceremonies to help ancestral spirits possess worshippers. Kumina was practised mostly in Saint Thomas Parish, where Howell lived while shaping many Rasta beliefs. A second possible source is Hindu migrants, who came to Jamaica as indentured servants from British India between 1834 and 1917 and brought cannabis with them. A Jamaican Hindu priest named Laloo was one of Howell's spiritual advisors. Widespread medicinal and recreational use among Afro-Jamaicans in the early 20th century may also have played a part. Early Rastas may have taken a feature of peasant life and sanctified it with Biblical correlates.

  In many countries, including Jamaica, cannabis is illegal, so using it is also a protest against the rules of Babylon. In the United States, thousands of practitioners have been arrested for possessing it. In 2015 Jamaica decriminalized personal possession of up to two ounces and legalized cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes. In 2019 Barbados legalised its use by Rastafari in religious settings and pledged 60 acres of land for them to grow it.

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• 7. Sound and Symbol

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  Rastafari music developed at reasoning sessions, where drumming, chanting and dancing meet. Its purpose is to praise and commune with Jah and to reaffirm the rejection of Babylon. Rastas believe it can cure colds, fevers and headaches. Many songs use the tunes of older Christian hymns, while others are original. The akete, a set of three drums, provides the bass line, joined by rattles and tambourines. The fundeh drum adds a syncopated rhythm, and a batá drum improvises over the top. The bass line symbolises blows against Babylon, and the lighter beats stand for hope.

  In the 1960s, ska was the popular sound of Jamaica. Its protests against social and political conditions were mild, yet it gave early expression to Rasta ideas. The drummer Count Ossie believed black people needed their own style of music, and he drew heavily on Burru, an Afro-Jamaican drumming tradition. He popularised the new ritual music at groundings and groundations around Jamaica, with songs such as "Another Moses" and "Babylon Gone". The musician Don Drummond brought Rasta themes into songs such as "Reincarnation" and "Tribute to Marcus Garvey".

  Reggae arrived in Jamaica in 1968, with slower, heavier rhythms than ska and more Jamaican Patois. Like calypso, it served as social commentary, but it used radical political and Rasta themes far more openly. Reggae artists adopted Rasta ritual rhythms, chants, language, motifs and social critiques. The Wailers' "African Herbsman" and Peter Tosh's "Legalize It" referred to cannabis, while The Melodians' "Rivers of Babylon" and Junior Byles' "Beat Down Babylon" referred to Babylon. By the mid-1970s reggae was popular worldwide, and black people in many countries heard it as music of the oppressed. Marley played a major role in introducing Rastafari themes to audiences across the globe.

  The success angered many Rastas, who felt reggae had commercialised their religion and attracted "pseudo-Rastafarians" who wore the clothes without sharing the beliefs. The link between reggae and the faith is often exaggerated by outsiders. Most Rastas do not listen to reggae, and groups such as Protestant Evangelicals have used it too. Dub music, which grew out of reggae, often uses Rastafari terminology even when its artists are not Rastas. Dancehall later pushed lyrical themes of hyper-masculinity, violence and sexual activity in place of religious symbolism. A revival of Rastafari-focused reggae came in the mid-1990s with Anthony B, Buju Banton, Luciano, Sizzla and Capleton.

  Rastas treat words as having intrinsic power and avoid language that feeds servility, self-degradation or objectification. They speak their own form of language, called dread talk, Iyaric or Rasta talk, which developed in Jamaica in the 1940s. By building their own speech, they see themselves as attacking the integrity of English, a tool of Babylon. The pronoun "I" signals that the self is divine and reminds each Rasta that they are not a slave. So "I and I" replaces "we", "I-ceive" replaces "receive", "I-sire" replaces "desire", "I-rate" replaces "create" and "I-men" replaces "Amen". Rastas call this "InI Consciousness" or "Isciousness". They write the emperor as "Haile Selassie I" to signal his divinity.

  Sound should match meaning. Rastas say "downpression" for oppression, because oppression bears down on people and "up" sounds like the "opp" in the word. They prefer "livicate" to dedicate, since "ded" echoes "dead". In the early decades, "Peace and Love" was a common greeting, though its use faded as the religion matured. The scholar Barrett noted that for outsiders Rasta rhetoric can be "meaningless babbling". Yet Rasta terms have also seeped into wider Jamaican speech.

  Red, black, green and gold mark Rasta buildings, vehicles, kiosks, clothing and other objects. They let Rastas set themselves apart and recognise one another. Red, gold and green come from the Ethiopian flag. Garvey had used red, green and black for the Pan-African flag of his United Negro Improvement Association, with red for the blood of martyrs, black for the skin of Africans and green for the vegetation of the land. Some Rastas endorse that reading. Gold, taken from the Jamaican flag, is often read as the minerals and raw materials that make up Africa's wealth. Pan-Africanists more broadly have adopted the set, which is why many flags of post-independence African states carry it. Rastas often pair the colours with the Lion of Judah, also from the Ethiopian flag, which symbolizes Haile Selassie.

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• 8. Living Naturally

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  Most Rastas share a pair of fundamental moral principles known as the "two great commandments": love of God and love of neighbour. To judge whether to do something, many consult the presence of Jah within themselves. Rastafari prizes "living naturally". In this view Africa is the natural home of black Africans, where they can live by African culture and tradition and be themselves physically, emotionally and intellectually. Westerners, Rastas say, have cut themselves off from nature through technology and grown debilitated, slothful and decadent. Some believe they should follow African laws over those of Babylon, which can set them against the law of the countries where they live.

  The scholar Maureen Warner-Lewis observed that Rastafari combines a "radical, even revolutionary" stance on race and politics with a "profoundly traditional" approach elsewhere. Rastas generally distrust modern capitalism and favour small-scale, pre-industrial, agricultural societies. Many Jamaican Rastas do not vote, dismissing politics as "politricks", and they rarely join parties or unions. The political left has criticised their expectation of inevitable change as a brake on action. Others are active. The Ghanaian Rasta singer-songwriter Rocky Dawuni joined campaigns for democratic elections, and in Grenada many Rastas joined the People's Revolutionary Government formed in 1979.

  Traditional Rasta discourse, citing the Book of Leviticus and the writings of Paul the Apostle, presents women as morally weak, easily deceived by evil, and impure during menstruation. It also holds that Babylon has emasculated black men, whose manhood must be restored. The result is a patriarchal outlook in which women submit to male leadership. Cashmore suggests Rasta women accept this as their duty. Maureen Rowe argued they joined despite the restrictions because they valued the structure and discipline the life offered. Since the 1970s, attitudes have shifted, with a growing "womanist" movement and more women in leadership roles locally and internationally.

  Rasta women usually wear clothing that covers the head and hides body contours, with long skirts preferred over trousers. According to traditional discourse, this prevents the sexual objectification of women by men in Babylon. Men face no such code. Some women challenge the norms by going bareheaded in public and wearing trousers. Men and women took part in early rituals together, but from the late 1940s and 1950s ceremonies were increasingly segregated, based on the belief that menstruation made women impure and distracting.

  In Jamaica, Rastafari did not promote monogamy. Men may take more than one partner, though this is not especially common, while women are expected to reserve themselves for one man. Common-law marriage is the norm, though many Rastas are legally married. Men call their partners "queens", "empresses" or "lionesses", and the men are known as "kingmen". Family life is highly valued, and traditionally the faith emphasised fathers' part in raising children as a recovery of African manhood. Procreation is seen as the purpose of sex, so oral and anal sex are usually forbidden, and contraception and abortion are usually censured as Babylonian inventions to reduce the black African birth rate. Rastas typically express hostile attitudes to homosexuality, drawn from Biblical references to same-sex activity, and LGBTQ+ Rastas may conceal their orientation.

  Rastas aim to eat "ital", or natural, food, often grown organically and locally. Most follow the dietary laws of Leviticus and avoid pork and crustaceans. Others are vegetarian or vegan, a practice they derive from the same book, and many skip additives such as sugar and salt. In Ghana, where traditional meals include plenty of meat, the Rasta preference for vegetables has produced the saying that they "eat like sheep and goats". In Jamaica, practitioners have turned ital food into a business, for example by selling fruit juices prepared to Rasta custom. Men refuse food prepared by a menstruating woman, and some avoid food prepared by any woman. Rastas generally avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, calling them unnatural and dirty. Many also reject surgery, injections and blood transfusions, preferring herbal teas and poultices.

  Dreadlocks are among the most recognisable Rasta symbols. Rastas find support for them in the Book of Numbers and link them to the strength of the Biblical figure Samson. They call them a mark of a covenant with Jah and a refusal to follow Babylon's grooming norms. Rastas often criticise black people who straighten their hair, seeing it as imitation of white European hair and alienation from African identity. Some shape their locks like a lion's mane, honoring Haile Selassie as the Conquering Lion of Judah. Not every Rasta agrees that dreadlocks are required. Those without them are called "cleanface" Rastas, and those with them "locksmen". Rastas who joined the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, to which Haile Selassie belonged, are forbidden to wear them. Rastas call non-Rastas "baldheads" or "combsome", and newcomers with budding locks "nubbies". Bobo Ashanti members hide their locks in turbans, while others tuck them under a rastacap or tam in green, red, black and yellow.

  Beards and tall hair marked the movement from the 1930s, perhaps in imitation of Haile Selassie. Dreadlocks arrived in the 1940s after debates in which their supporters came out on top. Explanations differ. One says Rastas copied African peoples such as the Maasai, Somalis or Oromo, or fighters in Kenya's anti-colonialist Mau Mau Uprising. Another credits the hairstyles of Hindu sadhus. The style has attracted stigma. In Ghana, dreadlocks are often associated with the homeless and mentally ill, and the stigma extends to Ghanaian Rastas. In mid-20th-century Jamaica, teachers and police officers forcibly cut off Rastas' dreads. Rastas have since won court battles in various countries. In 2020 the High Court of Malawi ruled that all public schools must allow students to wear dreadlocks, with enforcement due before the 30th of June 2023.

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