Slavery was abolished in 1886 in Cuba, a nearby island of Jamaica. Garvey was born the following year, August 17 at St. Ann's Bay north of Jamaica, not far from the birthplace of Bob Marley and Winston "Burning Spear" Rodney. In the oppressed island, where racial segregation (apartheid) rule, working conditions have not changed since the abolition of slavery. Many Jamaicans have migrated to Panama to work on the site of the famous canal. Africa is plagued by the European colonial invasion at the time, but some West Indians come somehow to go there, especially in Liberia.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey is a musician who plays the organ at church, and though surrounded illiterate he is fond of reading. This Christian descendant of the Maroons is used in a printer and has a union that elects the leader during a strike. It quickly became a prominent speaker, a journalist (he founded the newspaper soon Garvey's Watchman) and a political activist.

From 1910 to 1914 he traveled to Latin America, Europe, and then begins a journey to the United States where he met all the movements aimed at empowering African Americans. Set in Harlem in the wake of the First World War, from 1918 to 1922 Marcus Garvey is known worldwide. While the Russian revolution in full swing, it supports the class struggle in its own way.

It supports Ho Chi Minh, Gandhi, and greet with respect the work of Lenin and Trotsky.

But while Trotsky considered essential unification of all oppressed people, without dividing them by the color of their skin, Garvey's vision through "race first" doctrine "black nationalist" radical opposed to the integrationist movement of the left. Do not believe that African Americans can live free and respected outside Africa, he wants to unify blacks internationally, and claims the right to "return" to Africa (Liberia mostly) African-Americans from all countries.

This approach resembles that of the Zionists who emigrated to Palestine so already, having also lost their hope of integration. Fought by African-American supporters of integration probably (conducted by Dubois), Garvey's stature will probably not equivalent in the twentieth century in the struggle for freedom "his people".

His movement, the United Negro Improvement Association, organizes garveyites networks worldwide.

Malcolm X's father, a pastor murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1931, was one of his most convinced followers. Garvey founded factories, distribution networks, and a famous cruise ship company, the Black Starline (nod to the White Starline, the owner of the Titanic which sank a few years ago ...).

His ships, financed by black shareholders, all serving the Caribbean, the United States, and prepare to take everybody in Africa. He delivers speeches ringing at Madison Square Garden, and became a target of the Government of the United States who returns to Jamaica and the forbidden room. Garvey was accused of fraud against the shareholders of the Black Starline. It will be broken by his opponents and many die of a heart attack June 10, 1940 in London and never reach Africa.

First released in his country, he will (followed by Bob Marley) the great national hero of Jamaica, and an example resounding throughout the island.

One of the first Rastas to sing his memory is Burning Spear, who dedicated his masterpiece, the album "Marcus Garvey" (1975) where several pieces are devoted to him. The Mighty Diamonds (Them Never Love Poor Marcus, 1976) and Culture (Garvey Rock, 1976 Black Starliner Must Come, 1978, Down In Jamaica, 1979) are among his most fervent admirers.

Most Rastas see it actually as the prophet who announced ... the arrival of the messiah.

The story of Marcus Garvey is at the heart of Jamaican culture, especially reggae.

The Rastafari movement

Garvey was often referred to Ethiopia in his speeches. In his principal work Philosophy & Public Opinion, he wrote:

"Let the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob exist for the race who believes in the God of Isaac and Jacob. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the God of all ages. This is the God in whom we believe and we worship through the spectacles of Ethiopia ".

In 1924 in Jamaica, the Reverend James Morris Webb gave a speech quoted by the conservative newspaper Daily Gleaner: "Look to Africa, where a black king will be crowned, the people who lead black issue". The colonial press denounced this doctrine then Ethiopianism "vulgar" they attribute to Garvey and which caused a stir among the Afro-Jamaican poor.

But suddenly in Ethiopia November 2, 1930 Tafari Makonnen, Ras Tafari (Ras = head, equivalent to the title of Duke) is wearing the crown of sacred Negast Negus (King of Kings) by the name of Haile Selassie I ( " Power of the Trinity ").

Selassie was already the ruler of the country since 1916. According to the sacred book Kebra Nagast (Kings Of Glory) Which traces the history of his ancient dynasty, it is nothing less than the direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Makeda called Ethiopia. Representatives of the prestigious Western countries attending the coronation of Selassie highly publicized. The Emperor of Ethiopia appears on the cover of every newspaper.

A Black front page!

This event is noticed, especially in Jamaica. It is perceived by a community of farmers Ethiopianism Sligoville (Jamaica), the Pinnacle, led by Leonard Percival Howell (real founder of the Rastafari movement), as fulfilling the prophecy attributed to Garvey. Indeed, the "King of Kings, Lord of lords" (1 Timothy 6:15) the Bible is very similar to traditional securities thousands of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie: "Emperor of Ethiopia, King of Kings, Lord of Lords , Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Light of the Universe ". Drawing on both in Marxism, Garveyism, Christianity, African culture and later Hinduism, Howell considers Selassie (or "Jah", a Hebrew names of God) as the messiah and therefore proposes an interpretation Africentric the Bible

(The First Rasta, Biography of Helen Lee, Flammarion 1999).

The first Rastafarian community does not yet have dreadlocks, but it consumes and sells vegetables around. The hemp used for rope-making, is also smoked.

If left to grow, such as grass and shrubs that measure up to three meters tall in ideal growing conditions (sun and near a pond). The British settlers had imported from India, where it is called ganja when it is shaped in the form of pulp, hashish. The West Indian hemp call himself the ganja.

They consume the local tobacco and ganja for centuries, the principle of smoking tobacco is even Arawak Indians in Jamaica, studied by Christopher Columbus (and exterminated by the Spaniards) who spent the year 1503 shipwrecked on this island. He also reported of the minutes of amazing matches batos, authentic ancestor of the future Arawak Jamaican national sport: football. Jamaicans post-Arawaks have always raved hemp, one of the properties is to increase the hearing. The fundamental importance of music in Jamaican society is certainly linked to the consumption of ganja, but Howell and his comrades the first link to "weed of wisdom" that drove past the grave of Solomon. For them, this herb is simply biblical hemp, and the chalice of wine from their mass quickly becomes a ganja pipe.

It is for these reasons that the Jamaicans, Rastas, and in particular, are of course associated with smell, the reggae singing profusely. One of the first to register on this subject is Count Ossie (Herb I Feel, 60s), followed by King Stitt (Herbman Shuffle, 1969), Bob Marley (Kaya, 1970), Peter Tosh (Legalize It, 1976). Howell and his community are very unpopular with the authorities to practice their "blasphemous" in fact because of their fierce rejection of the culture and colonial society. He was arrested for sedition in 1933, then interned in the asylum repeatedly, while Pinnacle was destroyed repeatedly by police.

The violent dispersal of the first Rastas in many leads to the capital in the 1940s. Real outcasts, misunderstood, tortured, they settled mainly in the sea near the center of Kingston, in the western area of Back-o-wall, where they built a shantytown. Their living conditions are very difficult.

Ethiopianism various liberation movements, sometimes led by wacky as Prince Emmanuel, founder of the future community Bobo turbaned singers Sizzla and Anthony B 1990s, parallel development in Jamaica. These sects "Ethiopian" as they are called, are turning to African culture still taboo in colonial society. Their reverence for the Emperor of Ethiopia, formerly Ras Tafari, gives them little by little, a generic name: Rastafari.

In the 1970s, Bob Marley said this during a press conference: "Christ has promised to return after about two thousand years. He said that on his return he would be the king of kings, the lord lords, conquering lion of the tribe of Judah in the land of King Solomon and King David. All my life I really looked at whether God existed. And as I am not racist at all, I searched everywhere. I looked in Europe, Africa, everywhere. When I looked in Ethiopia I saw a man called the King of kings and Lord of lords, conquering lion of the tribe of Judah on land of King Solomon and King David. Just like in the Bible "For me, there's this detail that always comes back, it would seem that King John had cut passages from the Bible. Moi, everything I see is that he did this is certainly not in favor of blacks. So when I heard this revelation of the king of kings returning land of kings David and Solomon, j ' I knew it was really Christ's return.'s real name is Rasta Haile Selassie, then we are the people of the Rastas. "