Tag: 1967

On Emperor Haile Sellassie I as the Living God

On By Jah BillahIn Dub Culture DepartmentLeave a comment

The doctrine that Ras Tafari known to the world as the Emperor Haile Sellassie I of Ethiopia, is the Living God, was developed by several persons independently.

Of these Mr. Leonard P. Howell is genuinely regarded as being the first to preach the divinity of Ras Tafari in Kingston. Howell is said to have fought against King Prempeh of Ashanti (1896), and claimed to speak an African language.

‘The Promised Key’, a basic Ras Tafari text, published in Accra, Ghana around 1930, shows clear evidence of Jamaican authorship. (Jamaica Times 28th May 1938).

Howell also spent several years in the north-eastern U.S., where he came into contact with black and white racism.

Another early preacher was Mr. Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert. Mr. Hibbert was born in Jamaica in 1894, but went with his adopted father to Costa Rica in 1911, returning to Jamaica in 1931. In Costa Rica Mr. Hibbert had leased 28 acres, which he put in bananas. In 1924 he had joined the Ancient Mystic Order of Ethiopia, a Masonic society the constitution of which was revised in 1888, and which became incorporated in 1928 in Panama. Mr. Hibbert became a Master Mason of this Order, and, returning to Jamaica, began to preach Haile Sellassie as the King of Kings, the returned Messiah and the Redeemer of Israel.

This was at Benoah District, St. Andrew, from whence he moved to Kingston to find Howell already preaching Ras Tafari as God at the Redemption Market.  Mr. H. Archibald Dunkley is another man who may claim to have brought the doctrine to Jamaica. Mr. Dunkley was a Jamaican seaman on the Atlantic Fruit Company’s boats, and finally quit the sea on the 8th December 1930, when he landed at Port Antonio off the s.S. St. Mary. Coining to Kingston, Dunkley studied the Bible for two-and-a half years on his own, to determine whether Haile Sellassie was the Messiah whom Garvey had prophesied. Ezekiel 30, I Timothy 6, Revelation 17 and 19 and Isaiah 43 finally convinced him.

In 1933 Dunkley opened his Mission, preaching Ras Tafari as the King of Kings, the Root of David, the Son of the Living God, but not the Father Himself. Other early preachers include Robert Hinds, who joined Howell, and Altamont Read who turned his following over to one Mr. Johnson when he became Mr. N. W. Manley’s bodyguard about 1940.

Found in: HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT, from:
The Rastafari Movement In Kingston, Jamaica. PART 1
Authors: M. G. SMITH, ROY AUGIER and REX NETTLEFORD
Source: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 1967)

Image source: Colin Edward Murray Art

ON THE RADICAL SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

On By Jah BillahIn dUbLeave a comment

The Situationists were a loose movement founded in the late 1950s by a group of Western European artists, theorists and political radicals. The group rejected orthodox leftwing politics and political activities in favour of direct intervention into the symbolic order of advanced capitalism and rejected concepts such as individual authorship and copyright. One of their best known tactics was that of the détournement, which involved turning the logic of capitalism against itself in manners that illustrated its inadequacies. This approach manifested itself in various ways, such as re-utilising and/or altering public images by graffiti or staging disruptive performances in public spaces without announcement or explanation.

In the case of Britain, one of the best know examples of the latter approach took place at Harrods, London’s celebrated upmarket department store, in December 1967. A group of radical students dressed up in Father Christmas outfits and went into the toy department and started giving toys away to children as presents (thereby embodying the rhetorical ‘spirit of Christmas’). Their action prompted security staff to intervene, scuffling with the Santas as they attempted to stop and detain them, causing stress and consternation amongst the parents and children present.

Found in CHART MYTHOS The JAMs’ and The KLF’s Invocation of Mu

by  Jon Fitzgerald and Philip Hayward (Shima , 2016).

Image source: NOT BORED