Rasta in the Caribbean

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051221/cleisure/cleisure2.html

Jamaica's most powerful export
published: Wednesday | December 21, 2005

Jamaica Gleaner
Peter Espeut

I SPENT last week in St. Lucia. This week I am in Dominica. The first thing that always strikes me when I travel east is how much Jamaican culture has penetrated these islands: particularly our music - and Rastafarianism. Reggae music blasts from every bus and maxi-taxi, and there seem to be more Rastas per square mile in these islands than in Jamaica. But yet no patties to speak of, and sadly, no Jamaican breakfast.

This is not the same phenomenon as United States culture taking over Jamaica; this is not cultural imperialism. Lucians and Dominicans are not trying to copy aspects of Jamaican culture because of the influence of the mass media, or because they want to ape a dominant regional power. To understand the penetration of Jamaican cultural elements into the Eastern Caribbean - and elsewhere - you have to understand the function those elements perform in Jamaica and in the adopting country.

Originally, and still now, both reggae and Rastafarianism supremely perform the function of protest and challenge. You might remember the times not so long ago when it was difficult to hear reggae music played on Jamaican radio; and when Rastafarians would be arrested by the police and their locks cut off. Both reggae and Rastafarianism were recognised early on by the authorities for what they really were: a direct challenge to the accepted social order, and efforts official and unofficial were made to suppress them.

BEAT DOWN BABYLON

As upper middle class young people in Upper St. Andrew danced on their verandas to 'I and I goin' beat down Babylon' and 'If you are the big tree, I am the small axe' they enjoyed themselves; but the music had an entirely different impact on the powerless (No! Disempowered) rural and ghetto youth moving to the same music on the corner. Political independence had come, but the latter were still left back by an education system which seemed more geared to keep them in cane, banana and coffee pieces and in upper St. Andrew kitchens, laundries and gardens than to thrust them out 'to build a new Jamaica'.

When the final book is written on the role of Christianity in post-slavery Jamaica, it is not going to be pretty. Relatively few former slaves joined the established church which supported and was supported by the existing order. African culture was still fairly strong, and the dissenting churches (especially the Baptists) helped the former slaves to make some sort of synthesis with European culture; during the 'Great Revival' which began in the 1860s almost every former slave nominally accepted Christianity; but the missionaries also taught them to accept their lot as second-class citizens and to look forward to divine justice later on in heaven. The informal church (such as the Independent Baptist Church of George William Gordon and Paul Bogle) taught the former slaves to fight injustice here and now, and we know how that ended.

PREACHING RESISTANCE

Now in post-Independence Jamaica there is Rastafarianism, preaching resistance to the dominant white culture which presents a white God, a white standard of beauty, and European culture as the norm of language, dress and music. Rastafarianism with its own language forms, way of dressing - and its own music - presents an easy way to challenge the official system seen as supporting the 'down-pression' of the majority of black Jamaicans.

And the quick spread of reggae and Rastafarianism throughout the Caribbean and the world is really the spread of a culture of resistance. And the traditional churches (including the Baptists) are losing membership to the Pentecostals who are forging a new synthesis.

Interestingly, there was a time that resistance to 'down-pression' was growing inside the traditional churches; had some form of 'Liberation Theology' become part of the praxis of the formal church, there would have been no theological or political space for Rastafarianism to develop and spread.

And so underground Jamaica has taken the lead in challenging the inequality which is woven into the fabric of Caribbean society, and I feel at home here in the Eastern Caribbean, even without my steamed cabbage or callaloo, my liver and bananas, and my ackee and saltfish. A very merry and holy Christmas to you when it comes!