Boy is a long story... Lemme start from when i was a child in Guyana. My mother had these two albums, Bob Marley "Live at the Lyceum" and "Pata Pata" by the great South African singer Miriam Makeba. I used to listen to those two LPs over and over, and the feelings I got from them was just indescribable... it would transport me to visions of another place, another time that I know was Africa, memories of the motherland coming to I through the blood of my ancestors. I ain't reach the shores of Africa as yet, when I do I wouldn't be surprised if me recognize something from them childhood visions.
Next, years later when I went to college in the States, I got involved with the movements against Apartheid and to stop U.S. intervention in Central America. So I get to overstand a little about the struggle, what it takes to come together against downpression. Get beat up bad by dem po-lice when I was demonstrating against George Bush Sr. at the start of the Gulf War. Get a little first-hand experience of what my people have to go through. All this time, Bob and Peter and them was strong in my consciousness and continually inspiring me to resist illegitimate authority. But I didn't sight Selassie as yet, to me at the time he was just another dictator who lived in luxury while his people starved.
Fast-forward a year or two, I was entering my twenties and I went back to Guyana for the first time in a while. At that time, like me say, I loved reggae music and I loved to smoke herb but I didn't know much else about Rasta. I knew my aunt and her husband were rasta but I hadn't had much contact with them in a while.
So anyway I was in this house in Durban St. smoking with some bredrens when a man named ras Diallo (one of his names- everybody in G.T. got at least three they go by) start explaining to me about Selassie I. Quote me some speeches and show me some pictures like Selassie firing the machine-gun at the fascists, and more pictures. That is where me start get the vibe that there is something special about this man. In one picture HIM look like a lion, in a next like a lamb, in a next like a eagle... from then on me start reading up about the man. I just get a vibe similar to the visions I used to have when I look at this man. Is a week or two later I was smoking at a next man's house and police come within an inch of bustin in on we (they was looking for someone next door). At that time you could get lock up for 3 years for any amount of herb in Guyana. As soon as the police gone me say "Rastafari!", me never even know me was going to say it, it just come out. It seemed like the natural and right name to use when invoking or thanking JAH. I had found out it mean "Head Creator" and Haile Selassie mean "Power of the Trinity." From then on, me start considering I-self a Rasta.
Rasta livity just seemed to fit in with everything I already believed, like I had already been vegetarian from me turn 19 (although me slip up from time to time and nyam a fish or two). HIM speeches reflected my desire for justice and equality.
It was later on that I really start reading the Bible, so I could say is HIM and roots music that led me to the Bible, not the other way around. In the Bible I find more confirmations of what I instinctively knew, that this man is someone special. Then even reading about how dem find the oldest human skeleton in Ethiopia, another confirmation, that Ethiopia is the original homeland of the entire human race. Even Selassie I being a little short man, same way our early ancestors were short of stature. So is like Selassie represent that ancient link to our earliest ancestors.
Boy is more i want to post but I running out of time here and I have to find the right words. So a gon leff it at that for now and return to this topic later.
