Babylon's burning: reggae, Rastafari and millenarianism

Summary

Introduction

With a keen focus on societal reform at all levels, Rastafarianism has a conspicuous millenarian orientation. Certainly, during the period within which classic reggae evolved out of ska and rocksteady in the late-1960s up until the early 1980s, most Rastas expressed a strident millenarian liberation theology. Nathaniel Murrell notes the principal beliefs of that period:

belief in the beauty of black people's African heritage; belief that Ras Tafari Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia, is the living God and black Messiah; belief in repatriation to Ethiopia, qua Africa, the true home and redemption of black people, as “having been foretold and … soon to occur”; the view that “the ways of the white men are evil, especially for the black” race; belief in “the apocalyptic fall of Jamaica as Babylon, the corrupt world of the white man”, and that “once the white man's world crumbles, the current master/slave pattern [of existence] will be reversed”. Jah Ras Tafari will overthrow or destroy the present order, and Rastafarians and other Blacks will be the benefactors of that destruction; they will reign with Jah in the new kingdom. (1998: 5)

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that reggae, which is fundamentally related to Rastafari, articulates millenarian themes. The aim of this study is to provide an introduction to this discourse within reggae. That said, without some understanding of the roots and history of Rastafarianism, it will be difficult to make sense of such ideas.