Here is the first ever anthology on Jamaican music forms that have changed the shape of Western popular music. Beginning with Bob Marley, music reviewer Chris Potash explores the roots of Jamaican pop from mento, ska, calypso, and rock steady. The book also profiles such roots pioneers as Toots and the Maytals, the Skatalites, Jimmy Cliff, and more.

"Visitors to Jamaica are often unaware that reggae was a revolutionary music rooted in the suffering of Jamaica's poor. Rastafarians were once a target of police harassment and public condemnation. Now the music is a marketing tool, and the Rastafarians are no longer a "violent counterculture" but an important symbol of Jamaica's new cultural heritage.".

DIVDIVAn inspiring collection of poems, meditations, and lyrics by one of the world’s most revered musical legends /divDIVBob Marley’s music defined a movement and forever changed a nation. Known worldwide for their message of peace and unity, Marley’s songs—from “One Love” to “Redemption Song” to “Three Little Birds”—have touched millions of lives. This collection is the best of Bob Marley presented in three parts: “The Man,” giving an in-depth look into the life of Bob Marley; “The Music,” comprising his most memorable lyrics as well as links to many of his songs in iTunes; and “The Revolution,” containing his meditations on social equality and the Rastafari movement. Enriched with iconic photographs, Listen to Bob Marley provides insight into a reggae legend, the inspirational man behind the music. /divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an introduction by daughter Cedella Marley and an illustrated biography of Cedella including rare photographs from her personal collection./div/div

Decades after its birth and subsequent tour du monde, Rastafari has more recently also appeared in revolutionary Cuba. How the movement has been globalized and subsequentially localized in a socialist and Spanish-speaking context are the main foci of this book. In particular it examines how Cubans have adopted and adapted the movement to their own socio-political and cultural context. Particular attention is paid to Rastafari's development in the context of Cuba's current economic crisis and re-appearance of more overt racism. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, the study shows how Rastafari's growth and presence on the island have influenced and contributed to the formation and expression of new cultural identities and discourses with regard to what it means to be young, black, and Cuban. Katrin Hansing is a social anthropologist who has worked on numerous Cuba-related issues. Her main areas of interests and expertise include: migration, race/ethnicity, and identity. She is currently the director of a German Research Council funded research project on Cuba's social collaboration ties in Africa.

Who changed Bob Marley’s famous peace-and-love anthem into “Come to Jamaica and feel all right?” When did the Rastafarian fighting white colonial power become the smiling Rastaman spreading beach towels for American tourists? Drawing on research in social movement theory and protest music, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control traces the history and rise of reggae and the story of how an island nation commandeered the music to fashion an image and entice tourists. Visitors to Jamaica are often unaware that reggae was a revolutionary music rooted in the suffering of Jamaica’s poor. Rastafarians were once a target of police harassment and public condemnation. Now the music is a marketing tool, and the Rastafarians are no longer a “violent counterculture” but an important symbol of Jamaica’s new cultural heritage. This book attempts to explain how the Jamaican establishment’s strategies of social control influenced the evolutionary direction of both the music and the Rastafarian movement. From 1959 to 1971, Jamaica’s popular music became identified with the Rastafarians, a social movement that gave voice to the country’s poor black communities. In response to this challenge, the Jamaican government banned politically controversial reggae songs from the airwaves and jailed or deported Rastafarian leaders. Yet when reggae became internationally popular in the 1970s, divisions among Rastafarians grew wider, spawning a number of pseudo-Rastafarians who embraced only the external symbolism of this worldwide religion. Exploiting this opportunity, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister, Michael Manley, brought Rastafarian political imagery and themes into the mainstream. Eventually, reggae and Rastafari evolved into Jamaica’s chief cultural commodities and tourist attractions.

From its beginnings in 1930s Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has become a global presence. While the existing studies of the Rastafarian movement have primarily focused on its cultural expression through reggae music, art, and iconography, Monique A. Bedasse argues that repatriation to Africa represents the most important vehicle of Rastafari's international growth. Shifting the scholarship on repatriation from Ethiopia to Tanzania, Bedasse foregrounds Rastafari's enduring connection to black radical politics and establishes Tanzania as a critical site to explore gender, religion, race, citizenship, socialism, and nation. Beyond her engagement with how the Rastafarian idea of Africa translated into a lived reality, she demonstrates how Tanzanian state and nonstate actors not only validated the Rastafarian idea of diaspora but were also crucial to defining the parameters of Pan-Africanism. Based on previously undiscovered oral and written sources from Tanzania, Jamaica, England, the United States, and Trinidad, Bedasse uncovers a vast and varied transnational network--including Julius Nyerere, Michael Manley, and C. L. R James--revealing Rastafari's entrenchment in the making of Pan-Africanism in the postindependence period.

. . . a cult, a deviant subculture, a revolutionary movement . . . these descriptions have been commonly used in the past to identify the Rastafari, a group perhaps best known to North American readers for their gift of reggae music to the world. With both compassion and a sharp sense of reality, anthropologist William Lewis suggests alternative perspectives and reviews existing social theories as he reports on the diverse world of the ganja-smoking Rastafari culture. He carefully examines this culture in its confrontations with the law, its growing ambivalence about itself as well as the continued conflict between many Rasta and contemporary middle-class values. Characterized by rich ethnographic detail, an engaging writing style, and thoughtful commentary, Soul Rebels uncovers the complex inner workings of the Rasta movement and offers a critical analysis of the meaning of Rastafari commitment and struggles. Soul Rebels offers a solid historical overview of the movement, an excellent picture of diversity within the faith, fair and accurate discussions of sexism among the Rasta, engaging life history material, and rich descriptions of what actually goes on in a reasoning session. Lewiss treatment of Rastafari populations in a Jamaican fishing village, an Ethiopian market town, and an urban neighborhood in the northeastern United States sets his ethnography in the cross-cultural and comparative framework central to anthropological analysis.

An American Rastafarian “offers a vibrant examination of American and African history with an anti-colonial patina . . . engaging” (Kirkus Reviews). Revolutionary Threads offers an American Rasta’s retelling of episodes in American history with an anticolonial thrust, accented by Bobby Sullivan’s own personal experiences. The book ties together various subjects while returning each time to the culture of Rastafari, social justice movements, and cooperative economics. From how we perceive history in general, America's precolonial past, and global capitalism’s early development and the resistance to it, to political prisoners and a celebration of religious tolerance, the book approaches North America with an African-centric perspective. Sullivan dispels the oversimplification of our perceptions of Rastafari, as well as other cultures, in the age of the Internet, where the loudest voices are often the most extreme and divisive. Revolutionary Threads aims to serve as a unifying agent for our all-too-connected global village, and for the resistance to the consolidation of global capital and all its excesses. “A post-hardcore rock star, community activist, and social justice intellectual offers an alternative look at countercolonial history through the lens of the Rastafari movement.” —Kirkus Reviews “Outlining his philosophical influences and backpacking through history and criss-crossing continental borders, Sullivan puts his enlightenment journey and way of life, which includes activism for social justice, prison outreach, and cooperative economics, on paper.” —The Gleaner (Jamaica) “[Sullivan] meticulously sources his work throughout, whether providing a Howard Zinn-like take on the settlement of America by Africans predating Columbus, or in discussing political prisoners like Marilyn Buck . . . an engaging, lively, well-thought book which provides a picture of Rastafarianism in action, for punks and beyond.” —Razorcake