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| THE SHEARING OF LOCKS |
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| _____Haile
Selassie was reported dead in 1975 (to the disbelief of many Rastas even
today). The Ethiopian church, like many Orthodox churches under communist
rule, endured terrible persecution which it survived partly by compromise
with the persecutors. The Marxist regime in Addis Ababa was very unenthused
that an emperor-venerating and/or worshiping cult was flourishing in a part
of the world otherwise ripe for revolution. In addition, I have the impression that some of the increasingly numerous and often middle-class Ethiopian emigres in the West looked down on Rastafarians. The pious suspected their Orthodoxy (no doubt often rightly; that many "Orthodox" Rastas continued to secretly harbor heretical views is quite likely); the staid resented association with an impoverished and reputedly criminal Black underclass. The latter consideration was especially strong in Britain, where all forms of Rastafari spread rapidly among the West Indian minority in the '70s. (It is important to add, however, that England's Ethiopian community also provided legal and other support for Rastas subjected to racist and police harassment during this period, especially in the Handsworth section of Birmingham.) For whatever reason, in 1976 all Orthodox Rastas were required to cut their locks and to make an elaborate formal repudiation of heretical emperor worship (latreia). Whatever its long-term wisdom, this decree forced people who were "growing into an overstanding" by the slow traditional process to make a sudden decision; the cutting of locks, a purely external issue, seemed to many a repudiation of the movement's history. |
| REGGAE |
| _____This
was also the time when reggae music was at the height of its popularity,
and when explicitly religious lyrics were the norm within reggae. Many popular
bands were Orthodox, notably The Abyssinians, a group with priestly and
monastic connections. The family of reggae's "superstar", Bob
Marley, were mostly Orthodox, although Marley himself was for most of his
career a member of the Twelve Tribes sect. In his last years, dying young
of cancer, Marley underwent a remarkable spiritual transformation (evident
in his music also) culminating in his baptism; his Orthodox funeral in 1981
was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. |
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