120. Redemption Songs: Reggae and Rastafari

Posted on 19 March 2023

How the Rastafari movement grew from trends within Africana philosophy, and then passed into global popular culture in the music of Bob Marley and other reggae artists.

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Further Reading

• M.H. Chawane, “The Rastafarian Movement in South Africa: a Religion or Way of Life?” Journal for the Study of Religion 27 (2014), 214-37.

• D. Dunkley, Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement (Baton Rouge: 2021).

• E.B. Edmonds, Rastafari: from Outcasts to Culture Bearers (Oxford: 2003).

• S.A. King, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control (Jackson MI: 2002).

• D.V. Moskowitz, Bob Marley: a Biography (Westport CT: 2007).

• S. Singh, “Resistance, Essentialism, and Empowerment in Black Nationalist Discourse in the African Diaspora: A Comparison of the Back to Africa, Black Power, and Rastafari Movements,”  Journal of African American Studies 8 (2004), 18-36.

• A.M. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in Jamaican Politics (London: 2017).

Comments

Thomas Mirus 20 March 2023

Shortly after his cancer diagnosis, Marley was baptized into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church - the same church to which Selassie belonged.

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