Rastafari Exhibition at library of KITLV in Leiden, the Netherlands (September 2009)

RASTAFARI

Rastafarianism or Rastafari is a socio-religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica. Around leader Leonard Howell a group started to worship Haile Selassie, who in 1930 was crowned emperor of Ethiopia, as the incarnation of God. Selassie's pre-regnal name was Ras Tafari.
This related to their philosophy that opposed colonialism, Western dominance, and racial and social inequality. They were strongly influenced by the ideas of Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), an early proponent of Black Power and of repatriation to Africa. Garvey prophesized that the coronation of a king in Africa would signify the liberation of Africa and the African diaspora.
The Rastas focus on ancestral Africa combined with a spiritual renewal, including a rereading of the Bible from a Black perspective.

By the 1940s, the number of Rastafari adherents had increased, and a sizable Rasta community at Pinnacle was formed.
Due to their rebellious, anticolonial ideas, unconventional looks, including dreadlocks, and way of life, along with their common marijuana use, the Rastafarians became for the colonial authorities an unwelcome threat to the status-quo, and outcasts in much of Jamaican society.
In 1954 state forces destroyed the Pinnacle community, increasing the migration of Rastas to the ghettos of Western Kingston (Jamaica's capital).

Rastas influenced Jamaican music, getting a boost with Jamaicas independence in 1962. Genres as ska, then rocksteady, and reggae originated in Jamaica.
In the 1970s reggae internationalized its popularity, largely due to the international fame of Rastafarian Bob Marley (1945-1981).
This spread reggae, and with it Rastafari, globally. Also other Jamaican (Rasta) musical artists obtained international fan bases.
This international reggae community helped to spread Rastafarian ideas across national and racial borders. All over the world there are now Rastafarians, albeit with differing degrees of adherence or, as some would say, sincerity; some criticize so-called mere "fashion dreads".

In present-day Jamaica Rastafarians are a numerical minority - estimated at about 10% (of its 2,8 million inhabitants) -, but a culturally influential one.
Rastafari is also influential elsewhere in the Caribbean.

The KITLV has many publications and other materials on Rastafarianism: its history, philosophy, and its place in Jamaica and the Caribbean, as well as on related personalities and themes like Marcus Garvey, and reggae music. (Michel Conci)

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