Smithsonian’s National Museum shows ~ “ Discovering Rastafari ! ”

WASHINGTON, DC - Bob Marley, ganja smoking and dreadlocks are here — how could they not be in what is billed as the first exhibition about the Rastafari ever mounted in a major museum? Reggae, the ceremonial smoking of marijuana, and tightly coiled locks of hair could hardly be omitted when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History devotes a show to this Jamaican-born subculture. Most of us, in fact, know of Rastafari only through these popular manifestations.

But what is Rastafari? Is it a religion? A way of life? A political movement? All of the above, as this exhibition demonstrates. “Discovering Rastafari!” reveals far more about Rastafarian culture than familiar symbols and the show’s modest size might suggest.

Admittedly, the exhibition does not quite feel at home, squirreled away to the side before you enter a large, permanent show devoted to African cultures and peoples that is as bloated as this one is constricted. And of course the Rastafari exhibition does not really belong in the same museum as paleontological finds and collections of insects and gems. Yet the curator and anthropologist John P. Homiak spent years condensing his knowledge of the Rastafari into this show, while also consulting with nearly a score of believers and cultural leaders. It tells the story of a local folk religion that began almost 80 years ago with the belief that Haile Selassie — the 20th-century Ethiopian emperor — was the living God, the black Messiah. It grew to become an international movement, yet one that still has no central authority and no codified sacred texts.  

As the exhibition points out, Rastafari beliefs grew out of a particular experience — slavery and its aftermath in Jamaica — and a particular view of how that suffering might be overcome. In this case hardship was ameliorated by a hope adapted from the biblical dream of Zion, that someday blacks might return to a land from which they were exiled: Ethiopia.

Maps from the 17th and 18th centuries on display show that the country’s name was broadly used to refer to the entire African continent, but there are also biblical references to a particular kingdom. “Princes shall come out of Egypt,” a psalm proclaims. “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” In Jamaica the stretching of the hands began as early as the 18th century and reached far.

As the show describes, these ideas were amplified by the charismatic, Jamaican-born black leader Marcus Garvey, who in the 1920s urged all blacks to see themselves in a common struggle; he wanted them to view everything through a shared vision, to worship God “through the spectacles of Ethiopia.”

He also predicted that a black savior would emerge from Africa. But until that happened, he worked as if none would appear. He founded the United Negro Improvement Association (which had two million international members by 1919) and created the newspaper Negro World (which had a half-million circulation).

Then, as if satisfying that prophet’s expectations, Ethiopia’s prince regent, Tafari Makonnen, who had the honorific title Ras, meaning “head of an army,” was crowned emperor of Ethiopia. Garvey called on his followers to join together and “lift up the hand of Emperor Ras Tafari.”

Garvey did not foresee the kind of religion that would develop out of his messianic vision of Ras Tafari, who as emperor was renamed Haile Selassie (which, in the Ethiopian language Amharic, means “Power of the Trinity”). Selassie, tracing his own lineage back to King Solomon, was also not a modest man; his official titles included King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Light of the World. But by all accounts, he was also a brilliant speaker and statesman.

In 1935, when he was leading a fight against Mussolini’s invasion of his country, he became a world figure, and he was crowned Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1936. For a small group of Ethiopian believers in Jamaica, all this simply confirmed Selassie’s divinity and the fulfillment of prophecies.

The exhibition celebrates those ideas. There are examples here of folk art portraying Selassie, and samplings of the decentralized religion’s many subcultures and “mansions”: organizations reflecting various versions of the belief. There are also widely shared ideas, including a restricted diet called “ital,” avoiding meats and non-ganja intoxicants. And the spread of Rastafari is illustrated with examples of communities in Ethiopia formed by believers who settled there, and by Rastafari groups flourishing even in Japan.

Actually, the history is far darker, more disturbing and more intriguing. In a recent book, “Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers” (Oxford), Ennis Barrington Edmonds points out just how fierce the charismatic figures were who founded the movement.

Mr. Howell, Mr. Edmonds points out, recruited his first followers by advocating violence against whites and arguing for the superiority of the African race; in the 1930s he preached that they should also withdraw their allegiance from the British crown. His commune was subject to police raids, and he was jailed twice. He was ultimately committed to a mental hospital, believing himself the incarnation of Christ.

This rebellious and hostile energy is the flip side of the devotional worship of Selassie and his representation of black political power. Rastafari belief developed partly out of resentment, not just against whites, but against the black middle-class culture of Jamaica. This was one reason the once-disreputable style of dreadlocks and the ceremonial smoking of marijuana became so important. This opposition, in a subtler way, inspired the movement’s wit and strangeness, and its playful provocations. It helps explain Rastafari beliefs, the kind of enmity they inspired, and the extent of the transformation in more recent decades as Rastafari became more mainstream.

By . . Edward Rothstein