At this year’s annual Reggae Sumfest Festival in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Sean Paul and other mega dance hall artists performed for over ten thousand ticket holders in what advertisers called the biggest musical week in Jamaica’s history.
While it’s hard to tell whether the country’s limited decriminalization of ganja has attracted more global fans, Rastafari has played an important role in making Jamaica more inclusive. I’m curious about how the entertainment industry has begun to reimagine the role of Rastafarian culture in Jamaica’s tourism product.
In Kingston, you can still feel a tension between celebrating and marginalizing Rastafarianism. It is palpable on the cultural scene, at events like an April 2017 police raid of Dub Club, a legendary Sunday evening roots reggae sanctuary on Skyline Drive that is known for its positive, transcendental vibes. In that incident, police shut down the sound system in response to noise complaints, but took to excesses like using pepper spray on the promoter and patrons. While even Jamaica’s Culture Minister, Babsy Grange, protested the treatment of this “uptown” event, the heavy-handed approach to cultural events catering to locals is nothing new.
The night the Dub Club incident happened, I was with a friend on my way to the airport when a policeman pulled up beside our vehicle. His lights flared. “Rastaman,” he said loudly. “You’ve got to move from here. It’s illegal to park.”
As he drove off, we debated whether it had been disrespectful for the cop, who was not dreadlocked, to address my friend as “Rastaman.” Strangers often refer to dreadlocked men in Jamaica and elsewhere as “Rasta,” “Ras,” “Dread,” or “Rastaman.” But we agreed that there had been something haughty about his tone - something that brought to mind a presumptuous disregard across everyday social interactions.
In May, the charges against the veteran Dub Club musician, Karlyle Lee (Gabre Selassie), were dropped in exchange for his promise to keep noise levels down. But the bad taste lingers. It is a reminder of a lack of inclusion and standards of mass consumption that still limit the exposure of roots artists in Jamaica. With the international commercial success of dancehall artists who have major industry backing and crossover appeal, there is still a fight for respect of the “conscious” artists who first put Jamaica on the map. While Reggae Sumfest generates more than $5 Million for Jamaica, many established reggae and dance hall artists don’t make it to this international stage and eke out a living from local gigs.
Meanwhile, quiet cultural stigmas against rasta persist, pointing back to a history of physical and political intimidation of poor, black, and independent elements of Jamaican society – antecedents that go beyond mere culture clash. The violent demolition of the utopian settlement of Pinnacle in 1958 and the Coral Gardens massacres of 1963 are bloody highlights in this history. And for many decades, law enforcement and government officials continued to justify harassment, physical abuse, and marijuana crop-razing through laws that criminalized Rastafarian communities.
The counterculture of the rasta emerged as a direct response to this colonial suppression. Horace Campbell writes that “the Rastafari brought forward a level of spirituality to separate themselves from the rituals and religiosity that legitimized oppression.” This liberation calling has produced one of the most powerful musical movements the world has ever seen – a universe of lyrical expressions of the universal desire for love, identity, and self-determination. But today, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries remain victim to a much bigger set of post-colonial, authoritarian, and Christian values that stigmatize those who remind us of our non-conformist, Africanist roots.
Dub Club is not just a party. A place where both Jamaicans and Japanese tourists make their pilgrimage, it is a beacon of hope for a cultural movement that looks more inclusive and more sustainable. What would it look like if roots reggae artists and promoters were fully valued? Could there be a Jamaica in which police escorts accompany the Kingston Mayor as he drops in on Dub Club, where Reggae Sumfest’s sponsors back live streaming European tours by reggae sound systems? Would the fear of blackness and counterculture be replaced by homage and financial returns?
Consumers of reggae and dance hall culture and tourism can’t remove themselves from these questions. By calling out companies that exploit cultural caricatures of dreaded men and educating ourselves about African-rooted spiritual traditions, we can validate alternative lifestyles like Rastafarianism and the values of peace, diversity, and ecological harmony that they uphold. With the power of the purse and the social media megaphone, we can call the entertainment and tourism industries to account, demanding that they integrate entertainers of all affiliations into Caribbean cultural products.
After Sumfest this year, I got on the road to Kingston. I headed straight to Dub Club to pay respects to Gabre Selassie and every roots rock reggae pioneer whose spirit was present.