Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about structures of oppression and how the scaffolding of resistance movements builds over time. There’s endless inspiration in what I teach, like my current course: ‘Slavery and Global Ethics.’
The story I want to share is, in essence, an example of this scaffold building.
So, you know Bob Marley—Jamaican reggae legend and Rasta. The Rastafari movement “traces its roots back to both the Jamaica tradition of Maroon resistance and the influence of Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) with his vision of African redemption.” (Minority Rights n.d.)
You might know about the Jamaican Maroons—people who escaped enslavement and fought for their freedom against British colonial authorities (ca.17th-18th Centuries). They built their own sovereign communities in the mountains of Jamaica.
Interestingly, some argue that ‘Maroon‘ has become an ethnicity, and part of the Rasta identity as such. One scholar refers to this historical lineage as the “Slave-Maroon-Rastafari continuum.”
After the American Revolutionary War, ‘Black Loyalists’ (those who agreed to support Britain in the war in exchange for securing their freedom) were sent to Nova Scotia (ever read ‘The Book of Negroes‘ by Lawrence Hill? So good!).
In 1796, after the Second Maroon War in Jamaica, British authorities forcibly exiled over 500 Maroons to….. Nova Scotia, to join the Loyalists.
(Interestingly, the Citadel fort in Halifax, Nova Scotia, (below) acknowledges that Jamaican Maroons built at least one of its walls.)
Within 4 years, most of these Maroon exiles petitioned their way to Sierra Leone. Even though it was brief, this historical Maroon connection secured 20th-Century-Nova Scotia with an important place in the Slave-Maroon-Rastafi continuum.
Although, for the purpose of this story, let’s call it the ‘Slave-Maroon-Rastafari-REGGAE continuum.’
Jamaican-born and Maroon-decendent Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was a Black nationalist/pan-African activist and gifted orator who travelled around the Atlantic world giving speeches about Black empowerment. His ideas were foundational to Rasta theology—he has even been called the “father of the Rastafari movement.”
In 1937, Garvey gave a powerful speech in Nova Scotia (NS). Given his Maroon ancestry and NS’s history with Jamaican Maroons, some scholars suggest that the power of this speech may have reflected his personal affinity with the place. (Remember: +500 Jamaican Maroons were exiled to NS in 1796.)
The Rastafari movement was established in the spirit of both Garvey and the Maroons. These ideas often featured in the songs of the most famous Rasta—Bob Marley. Marley’s beautiful “Redemption Song” epitomizes these Rastafari politics. It is also almost the exact words of Garvey’s Nova Scotia speech.
For example, Garvey said in 1937:
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind…”
Then, in Redemption Song, Marley sang:
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds..”
Interestingly, Redemption Song was both the last track on Marley’s last album and the very last song he ever performed lived. As a Marley biographer wrote about this significance:
“…the song had a crystalline beauty that was like a summation of the entire philosophy of Bob Marley, an elegiac work whose haunting qualities came to dominate the album when positioned as its closing track.” (Salewicz 2009, 377)
And so, this beautiful closing track also closes the ‘Slave-Maroon-Rasta-Reggae’ continuum and represents the historical scaffolding of resistance embodied in Redemption Song.