Tag: power

On Colonization of Rastafari and Reggae

On By Jah BillahIn Dub Culture DepartmentLeave a comment

From Prophecy to Pastime: Reggae as Escapism

Once a ceremonial weapon of Word, Sound, and Power, reggae is too often reduced to mood music. The prophet becomes performer; prophecy becomes therapy. Frantz Fanon foresaw this: revolutionary culture repackaged as folklore for tourism and global markets. In “The Wretched of the Earth” he warned that national culture cannot be preserved as mere folklore, the traditions, costumes and clichés of an imagined past, but must emerge dynamically from present struggles for liberation, lest it be emptied of revolutionary substance. The rhythm is alive, but the message barely remains, a faint remnant of its true power.

Reggae soothes instead of disturbs. It plays in cafés, yoga studios, and resorts as background leisure. The sacrament of ganja becomes a lifestyle brand; the Rasta image is sold as relaxation instead of resistance.
This blunts the revolutionary edge. Reggae, once weapon of the poor, is wielded as pacifier.

Ceremony becomes stage show, testimony becomes branding, judgment becomes “good vibes.”

Yet beneath the gloss, the roots remain. Reggae can still be reclaimed as weapon of awakening, a sound to unsettle Babylon rather than soothe it.

From:
The Colonization of Rastafari and Reggae: From Rebel Music to Commodification by Fikir Amlak

ON BHAJAN POWER

On By Jah BillahIn Dub Culture DepartmentLeave a comment

Another context where the female sādhus exercise agency and power is their devotional song, bhajan, performances. Most of the female sādhus consider bhajan singing to be a powerful vehicle for receiving sacred knowledge and experiencing the divine directly; it may even catalyse their divine visions. Further, bhajan singing is understood to effect religious power for the female sādhus. Gangagiri often says, ‘My bhajans are my power.’ This statement indicates her perception that bhajans function as a performative medium by which means sādhus express bhakti to God. Gangagiri’s comment suggests that her bhakti is the basis of her own power and authority.
Female agency is explicitly linked to devotional practice by these female sādhus. By comparison, the male sādhus rarely discussed bhajan singing as a means for meeting God and rarely considered nirguṇī bhakti to be the basis of their own power and authority.

Found in ‘My bhajans are my power’: Performing Nirguṇī Bhakti through Devotional Song, from: ‘Crossing Over the Ocean of Existence’: Performing ‘Mysticism’ and Exerting Power by Female Sādhus in Rajasthan, by Antoinette E. DeNapoli.

Source: The Journal of Hindu Studies 2010

Image source: Wikimedia Commons