The movement, which came of age at a time when Africa was under white rule, deified Selassie, a black emperor who symbolized an independent Africa. Rastas named their movement after Haile Selassie, who was known as Ras Tafari before becoming Ethiopia's emperor in 1930. One group of them chewed khat, a popular stimulant here, instead of smoking marijuana. There were Ethiopian Rastas, as well, young people in dreadlocks who said Marley's music spoke to them but that some Rasta beliefs did not. "When I smoke the herb, I connect with another world." Many Rastafarians believe that smoking marijuana is a sacrament approved by the Bible. "I feel the songs as much as anyone else," said Chihiro Nakamori, 25, of Kyoto, who had fledgling dreadlocks hanging from his head. In the raucous, celebrating crowd were some Japanese Rastas who said that Marley's message of black empowerment appeals to anybody who is rebellious inside. Her remarks drew fierce criticism in Jamaica, Marley's birthplace, but she said it had been her husband's lifelong wish to reach the promised land. Rita Marley gave an indication of the deep ties Rastas feel toward Ethiopia when she said last month that she planned to dig up the singer's remains in Jamaica one day and rebury them in his spiritual home of Africa. "The feeling is so strong that I can't find words to express it."
"This is our pilgrimage country," said a man who calls himself Jah Eliejah Adanjah, an aging Rasta from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe who was setting foot on Ethiopian soil for the first time. But the arrival of the Rastas was unnerving for some locals, who have trouble grappling with their marijuana use and the belief among many of them that Haile Selassie, the country's deposed emperor, was more deity than man. The Ethiopian government sanctioned the concert because it saw the influx of so many visitors as an economic boon. That special status comes despite the poverty of the place, the regular bouts of starvation, the sicknesses that fell so many Ethiopians. Among the revelers were beggars, prevailing on all the idealists to give them something to eat.Įthiopia is regarded as the promised land for Rastafarians, the dreadlocked Jamaican spiritualists who gave Marley so much of his inspiration.
Meskel Square, the spot where giant portraits of Marx and Lenin looked down on Ethiopians during the country's Communist days, was decorated with likenesses of Marley.
So his wife, Rita, his sons, including Ziggy Marley, and numerous other admirers did the singing for the late reggae great, as tens of thousands of people jumped and gyrated to the trademark beat at a daylong concert entitled "Africa Unite." Also performing were the singers Lauryn Hill, formerly of the Fugees Angélique Kidjo from Benin and Ethiopian entertainers singing their versions of reggae. In that lilting voice of his, he would have sung of love, of unity, of his beloved Ethiopia.īut Marley was only a memory, albeit a powerful one, at the celebration of the 60th anniversary of his birth on Sunday in the sprawling central square of the Ethiopian capital. 6 - If he had been onstage, Bob Marley would have waved his graying dreadlocks in the air and beseeched black people to continue struggling.
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