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The Rastafarian Movement

It was during the 1970s when the world witnessed the uprising of Jamaican people against the neocolonial in the country to improve their social conditions. It is thrilling to see the unique bond the movement shared with Reggae, its worldwide popularity, and how it reshaped the meaning of the whole movement.

 It is known that reggae music increased the visibility and popularity of the Rastafarian movement worldwide, but it also made the movement impure and gave rise to a new group called the pseudo-rastafarians, perpetuated the nuances of the two ideological groups - political and religious rastafarians into irreconcilable rift.  

 In its journey from the primitive studios in Jamaica to the state-of-the-art studios in the United States or Great Britain, the reggae music lost its true essence of the movement, and the portrayal of the Rastafarian movement metamorphosed into a pan-African movement. Unlike early roots reggae, the worldwide popular reggae music projected the Rastafarians, not "Jamaicans", as "Africans". it is fascinating to see how the reggae music in its effort to appeal to the international crowd i.e. the white audience lost its true essence of the movement which began in Jamaica as a form of rebellion against the oppression of neocolonial society. 

 The Rastafarian movement critiqued the "prevalent individualism" and "imperialistic capitalism" as the reasons for poverty and slavery of the Africans. The world wide popularity of Reggae provided with an international audience to the voices of the marginalized black Jamaican people, but it also erased the agency of the people by commercializing it for profit. 

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