> On May 10, 9:51 am, "Owen C Bernard" comcast.net> wrote:
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>> 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.

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>> 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.

>
> I hope to see this soon
> I wonder what, in the mind of the reporter, makes mashing down Babylon
> racist?
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> A