Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T16:37:02.930Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Protestant vibrations? Reggae, Rastafari, and conscious Evangelicals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2006

TIMOTHY ROMMEN
Affiliation:
Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania, 201 S. 34th St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 E-mail: trommen@sas.upenn.edu

Abstract

The globalisation of reggae continues to engender a wide range of highly poignant re-inscriptions and re-interpretations of reggae's sound and of Rastafarian thought. One of the most compelling of these has been the negotiation of Rastafarian and Christian ideologies within the context of Protestant reggae bands and artists. The application of Rastafarian thought, dress and language to the evangelical concerns of Protestants – at times paradoxical, at others ingenious – signals an important moment of inter-religious contact that opens a window onto the complexities and multiple meanings that attach to music and to religious systems as they travel between the local and the global. This essay considers music by Christafari (United States), Sherwin Gardner (Trinidad and Tobago), and Stitchie (Jamaica), and considers questions related to the parallel globalisation of reggae and Rastafari. It does this by interrogating the extent to which authenticity, positionality, and religious context inform the use of and interpretation of Rastafari symbols within gospel reggae. In so doing, I introduce a concept that I call the negotiation of proximity, and offer some reflections on the ways that the Rastafari elements within gospel reggae might be understood in new, global (and newly localised) contexts.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)