Review Summary: While the tails of Babylon are being smitten, let us revel in the beauty of the Rasta gospel music.
If I may speak on personal terms, I find the genre of reggae and to a lesser extent dub a somewhat uneven ground. At one point I've researched quite the substantial chunk of it I've held listening sessions I've read up on its history even purchased books on the subject, wrote a little something back in my days of youthful energy where I could simply have an idea and by tomorrow have 1000 words with footnotes ready. All this and yet somehow I still am not entirely certain what to think of the genre. I pride myself, although not openly, on being something of an absolutist. In music or film or really any other art form that involves longevity and attention, no matter how long or tedious or outside of my wheelhouse, even if it takes me several attempt, I will finish what I've started. In researching, I am as diligent as an academic. And in defining my opinions especially on things as over arcing and large as entire genres I like to have My mind made-up concretely, although it is subject to change. That is why reggae is a beast that I lose sleep over, provided I do indeed think about it. An easy opinion, or one I'd be satisfied with, simply eludes me. It drives me as an absolutist mad.
Enter: Dadawah. Not necessarily the first artist that comes to mind when genre reggae is mentioned. There are not as many articles or reviews, retrospective texts, or contemporaneous reports, on either the artist or the album. And yet it seems that within the circles of reggae listeners and connoisseurs Dadawah, aka Ras Michael, is a household name. He and his other band, Sons of Negus essentially exemplify Rastafarian lifestyle and behaviour, both sharing love or kindness, and difficult, confrontational, not fearful of others’ opinions or of coming off as aggressive. Music journalist Stephen Davis recounts meeting Ras Michael and Sons of Negus. He describes a rather amusing, but also for many attendees uncomfortable situation, where the band was supposed to play a gig but showed up late, played the set in front of some press that took photographs and recordings, and afterwards aggressively demanded that some of the reporters give the band some hardware, either cameras or tape recorders or anything, to which the annoyed press promptly told them to *** off. Davis later built a rapport with the band only to have one of the band members try and steal gas out of his car tank. This hilarious encounter is how I, from the safety of my sheltered European life lacking any real worldly experience, imagine the looseness and carefree nature of a stereotypical Rastafarian life.
There comfortably lies an uncomfortability in the particulars of reggae, dub, and adjacent styles’ rise; a history of violence perpetrated by the usurping white European, industrialising all on their way, decimating spiritual freedom and lifestyle intertwined with nature. The Rasta religion is in its roots a defiance and rejection of such invading power. The music it stemmed is a clear reflection thereof, as is blatantly obvious from its lyrics. But among the protest songs and movement of resistance, Rasta music is also thoroughly music of worship, as well as celebration of all that is good. In this central message comes the subjected ‘Peace and Love’, Dadawah’s only release under the moniker. Part worship of Rasta traditions and themes, and part worship of life and love in general, which to the Rasta the Babylon at large (the Western, white, and colonising world) lacks and depletes.
Dadawah (which in the Chadic Hausa language apparently means either ‘more’ or a specific kind of fermented beans traditional in West Africa) sings praise to the Ethiopian king Halie Selassie, the messiah of the Rasta religion, right from the get-go, leaving no doubt of the gospel nature of his work. While his primary Sons of Negus were thematically all over the place, like a band usually is, this solo outing is most certainly sermon music. “Hail Jah Rastafari / Emperor Hailie I Selassie I” he cries in the opening of “Run Come Rally” (Jah Rastafari is in essence the God to the Rasta people). Even the subtitle to the album, Wadadasow, means a pastor, a preacher, and a grandfather, meaning a wise spiritual leader. Make no mistake, this is gospel, thrice as potent as yon meekly choir chants. Why, the opener’s repetitive looping mantras even work in meditative, hypnotic ways. The very same effect, in a mildly slower tempo, is achieved by “Seventy-Two Nations”. That song, whose title references the seventy-two nations described in the Bible, is a pastoral plea for the very seventy-two to find common unity under God. He also, typically of a Rasta preacher, calls back to Ethiopia, the ultimate land of Zion.
Naturally, the following “Zion Land” is just about that, Ethiopia. See, to a Rasta, the current land of Israel is not the holy land. The actual land of Israel lies in Jah Halie Selassie’s country of Ethiopia, the ultimate Zion, “Land of the Lion of Judah / The root of David”. This belief is inherently tied with a form of international Black Liberation movement. The final dream-like track, really the most direct and declarative song on the album, is then the capsule of all sentiments of the preceding songs and then some. At its surface it works as a typical gospel praise of the lord and all saints, but it also sings praise to those carrying burdens of Black Nation’s freedom throughout history, as well as decrying the struggles currently perpetuated upon black people everywhere, once again calling for unity as the only true means of fighting back. The song is meditative, drawn-out, minimalistic, hypnotic in its cyclical repetition, and beautiful in the most subtle of ways.
Album’s final words are a direct call to action for all black people worldwide, but can be refrained for anyone living and struggling under the Western boot, the choking post-industrial world governed by imaginary consensus of a value of pieces of paper, holding everybody in a cage. The Babylon, the capitalist world. But most of all, it has played a cruel and unforgivable joke on black people of all nations, the true children of God, according to Rastafari. And those must “Break the bars asunder” and “Smite the tails of Babylon”.
Africa must be free, Black Man must be free
