> Exhibition Review
> Mystics and Militants: A Look at the Rastafari Kingdom
> Andrew Councill for The New York Times
> A display devoted to the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie at the
> "Discovering Rastafari!" exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of
> Natural History. More Photos >
>
> By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
> Published: May 10, 2008
> WASHINGTON - 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.
>
> Andrew Councill for The New York Times
> Prince Emmanuel's Pride regalia and Rastafari buttons. More Photos »
> 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. That placement is
> a relic of the 19th-century conception of the natural history museum as a
> temple devoted to exotic "natural" cultures and objects - evolutionary
> predecessors of the scientific West.
> 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 small as this exhibition is, there are enough history and material here
> to spur curiosity and wonder. But there is enough omitted so that eventually
> you see how partial - and partly skewed - an interpretation the show
> represents.
> 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, though, becomes too abbreviated at this crucial moment. It
> pays brief attention to Leonard Howell, "sometimes called the first
> Rastafari," who founded the "first Rastafari commune" in Jamaica in 1940.
> Mr. Howell advocated a return to Ethiopia and handed out postcard passports
> to his followers. Mysterious and allusive books like "The Holy Piby" unified
> black believers.
>
> And then, in the show's narrative, came the gradual growth of this marginal
> movement, which gained in stature during the 1966 visit of Selassie to
> Jamaica. The emperor pushed the eccentric religion into the mainstream,
> inviting its leaders to state receptions and handing out gold medals to
> figures who were, until then, widely scorned. What Selassie did in the
> political realm, Marley did in the cultural realm, giving Rastafari ideas
> worldwide distribution.
>
> 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.
>
> But something strange happens in the midst of this narrative. Rastafari
> belief starts to seem almost sunny in nature, its messages homogenized into
> blandness. The highly patriarchal beliefs of the Rastas get only passing
> mention; the ceremonial use of marijuana is invoked by a small textual
> panel. And by highlighting Selassie's speeches at the beginning of the
> exhibition, with their proclamations of universal brotherhood, the show
> makes it seem as if those ideas were fundamental to Rastafari belief.
>
> 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.
>
> One of the key doctrines of Rastafari was "beating down Babylon"; Babylon
> was the metaphorical name given for European power, white man's culture, the
> established church and even the police. This racist and radical notion plays
> no role in the exhibition, though histories of the movement - in "The
> Rastafarians" by Leonard E. Barrett Sr. or a Rastafari reader, "Chanting
> Down Babylon" - give it an important place.
>
> 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.
>
> This is not apparent in the show. It is almost as if it were reluctant to
> give any hint of something that couldn't be universally hailed. And it
> leaves unclear how much of the original racist conception remains. Some of
> this difficulty may grow out of Mr. Homiak's admiration for the culture he
> has studied. But part of it has the characteristic of many museum shows that
> begin, as this one boasts of doing, with an "advisory team" of cultural
> leaders that was "consulted on all details of the exhibition to ensure that
> it communicates the most important aspects of Rastafari to the public."
>
> This is pandering and promotion, not scholarship, and it mars what could
> have been an even more fascinating show.
>
> "Discovering Rastafari!" runs through Nov. 8 at the Smithsonian National
> Museum of Natural History, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW,
> Washington; (202) 633-1000.