30 May 2020. Rastaman.
People would say elders, but that's sentimentalizing, and when you look at these faces, there's something more essential going on. Yes, some are old enough to remember even Leonard Howell--the Rasta founder--maybe not quite to the beginning, in the '1930's, but from the late 1950's, say, when Pinnacle (the Rastafari redoubt in the hills above Spanish Town) was intact--and lived through it's destruction, with the exodus to the slums of Kingston (Back O'Wall, the Dungle, Trenchtown). Materially, a time of great privation--and the lives of most of the Rastas then were extremely poor--but also characterized by elements of real hope--the mission to Africa in 1961, the dream of repatriation, then Jamaican Independence in 1962--and the indelible experience of Haile Selassie's visit to the island on April 21, 1966.--thereafter known as Grounation Day. And the music emerging in parallel--Ska, Rock Steady, Reggae, and the way it reached an audience far beyond Jamaica... The world of Roots Reggae--the Skatalites, Burning Spear, the Ethiopians, and of course Bob Marley--the spirit of that music reflects this great opening...
But Jamaica's political situation turned increasingly corrosive, with nonstop gang violence egged on by both of the primary political parties (the Rastafari were neutral, but everyone was drawn in, regardless.) And then the emergence of Jamaica's drug culture, extremely violent--the trade soon enough exported to the United States--so that the world of Roots Reggae was replaced by that of Dancehall--also reflective of its time. Louche, flashy, dangerous.To the degree (as described by writer Colin Grant) that when Bunny Wailer appeared on a Kingston festival stage in 1990, he was met with a hail of bottles and stones. The crowd didn't want what him. Hard to fathom, less than ten years after Bob Marley's death--but not if one follows all the changes...
So, these faces, still from the time before--as was much of Rasta culture, I'm guessing. And then their age as well--so that the natural arc of life can be seen there too. Giving them (at least to my eye) not so much an antiquarian feel as the mein of dignified survivors. The world that nurtured them has disappeared (including the death of Haile Selassie--Jah Rastafari--however one interprets it.)
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A parallel: remembering my father's face on the 26th of December, 1991--sitting on the living room couch in Oceanside. He would have been 87. The television was on, and as we watched, the Soviet flag was being lowered, in Moscow, for the very last time. The symbolic end to another era--the one he himself had lived through (having fought on the Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War). I wondered mightily at the time what it meant for him to see this--his feelings, after those many years of commitment and hope. But as carefully as I looked at his profile, and as much as I wanted to know, I couldn't tell...
