Published:Wednesday | July 5, 2023 | 12:22 AM
From left: Dennis Anthony Thomas, aka ‘King Kong’; Honorary Consul Yodit Hylton; Dr David Aarons and Saba Thomas.
The African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank, in partnership with the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) and the Ethiopia Honorary Consulate in Kingston, hosted a keynote lecture which reflected on the island’s connection to Ethiopia through the Rastafari movement.
The lecture was delivered at the NGJ by Dr David Aarons, Jamaican ethnomusicologist and lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA, on June 23. Titled ‘Africa Is Our Home: Reggae Music and Rastafari Repatriates in Ethiopia’, it shed light on the topic of the Rastafari repatriation movement in Ethiopia, which has been ongoing since the 1960s.
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“Rastafari have been fleeing the West to live in their Promised Land, Ethiopia. However, this repatriation movement has experienced numerous challenges related to land ownership and access to citizenship in Ethiopia,” Dr Aarons said.
Highlighting research which he conducted in Ethiopia with Rastafarian repatriates, Dr Aarons emphasised how Rastafarian have used reggae music to “chronicle their exodus out of Babylon while highlighting the joys of living in Zion”. He argued that by singing songs about belonging, and by collaborating with Ethiopian musicians to develop a reggae scene in Addis Ababa, repatriated Rastafarian reggae musicians have served as ambassadors for the repatriated community in Ethiopia. He pointed out that the work of these musicians has facilitated greater visibility and audibility for all repatriates in a land that does not fully understand their need to belong.
RICH HISTORICAL LEGACY
The signature event gave technocrats from the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport; honorary consulates; members of the academic community; cultural enthusiasts; members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Rastafariancommunity, along with students and teachers from the Haile Selassie Secondary School, which was named in honour of the late Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I, a culturally rich Jamaica-Ethiopia experience stemming from the captivating sounds of Nyabinghi drumming from the Akwaaba Drummers.
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Priest Abba Samuel WoldehawariatTedela of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church opened the event with a prayer in the Amharic language, which set the tone for the midday proceedings. Leslie Harrow, executive director of the Institute of Jamaica, who represented Olivia Grange, minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport;Yodit Hylton, Ethiopian honorary consul in Kingston; and Nicole Patrick Shaw, deputy director of the Institute of Jamaica, brought greetings.
Harrow said “the first group of Rastafarian brethren made the ‘trod’ home, starting with Jamaica’s first government-sponsored ‘Mission to Africa’ in 1961 to investigate the possibility of repatriation, and the second Mission to Africa, which was by Emperor Haile Selassie for several weeks in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. With such a rich historical legacy in mind, the Government of Jamaica, led by the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, has always remained proactive over the years in support of reggae music and inclusively upholding the rights of the Rastafarian community.”
RESIDENCY STATUS
Hylton applauded Dr Aarons for the groundbreaking study of the Rastafarian repatriation to Ethiopia and the emergence of the collaborative work between Rastafarian and Ethiopian musicians in Addis Ababa. She highlighted the early contribution of Dennis Anthony Thomas, aka ‘King Kong’, and his Ethiopian wife in creating a reggae scene in Addis Ababa.
She also referenced her own exposure to reggae music and the Rastafariancommunity in Shashamane, which exposed her to some of the issues faced by the Rastafarian community in Ethiopia as it related to land and citizenship issues.
She highlighted the work done by the Ethiopian government and herself to address these issues, including the granting of residency status to children and adults from Jamaica and the wider Caribbean born and/or living in Ethiopia. While acknowledging that the residency status did not fulfil the request for citizenship in Ethiopia by the Rastafarian community, Hylton explained the historical context for strictly limiting Ethiopian citizenship to persons born of an Ethiopian mother, or both parents being Ethiopian.
This, she explained, was an effort by the Ethiopian people and government to protect Ethiopia from European colonisers in earlier centuries. She emphasised that the Ethiopian constitution was not made restrictive to exclude Rastafarian or any other diasporic group.
She supported the main thesis of Dr Aaron’s study, which is that there needs to be greater collaboration between the musicians in Jamaica and Ethiopia. The guests at the event were treated to a cultural experience involving an Ethiopian traditional coffee ceremony and Defo Dabo. Hylton, in demonstrating the coffee ceremony to the guests, explained the significance of the traditions surrounding the ceremony which, in essence, was the coming together of friends and family around a clay coffee pot (jebena buna) for an intimate conversation and to taste Yergachefe coffee.