MUSIC-SIERRA LEONE: Taming Rastafarians

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Oct 6 1998 (IPS) - Five months ago, an irate lynch mob rampaged through Freetown forcing Rastafarians to cut off their dreadlocks, as punishment for alleged collaboration with the ousted military junta.

The mob destroyed the Rasta temple, ‘Garveyite Passe’, in the capital Freetown, after the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in Sierra Leone was toppled by a Nigerian-led West African peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, in February.

The attacks forced the Rastafarians, the followers of a religion from Jamaica which teaches that black West Indians will return to Africa, to go underground.

Now one of their number, Ibrahim Sorie Kamala, popularly known in Freetown as Jah Rice, has emerged as the torch-bearer of the Rastafarian community in Freetown, spreading “the message of redemption” through music and public performances. “I am saying ‘No’ to violence and preaching that Sierra Leoneans embrace one another so that our country could progress,” he says.

When the military seized power in May last year, most Rastas – the total population of the group is believed to be in thousands – supported the junta and served as its foot-soldiers.

“I restrained myself from joining them because I knew it wasn’t a ‘revolution’ as the armed vagabonds called it, it was retrogression all the way,” Rice says. “Most of my brethren sold their souls for the junta’s bags of rice. That was pitiful and my duty now is to prove that there are still Rastas who threat the path of righteousness.”

Rice is now working on two albums: ‘Bush House Africa’ and ‘No Violence’ to spread his message.

In ‘Bush House Africa’, Rice tries to give the continent a strong voice, a place in global development. He says that Africa is not given its rightful place and is always relegated to the background. Talents in Africa often are and that Europeans and non- Africans try “to keep us under…Is Africa not the birthplace of man? Come on, we have to let them know that we Africans could do what they do.”

Rice’s message of ‘peace’, however, is more stronger in ‘No Violence’. After experiencing first hand two military coups, in five years and their attendant spiral of violence, mayhem and destruction, Rice believes he is the right man to spread the message of peace in Sierra Leone.

“God has inspired me and dropped this message into me that I will do a reggae album, which will become the Number One hit in the world one day, and that day is near, so I am preparing myself spiritually for this,” says Rice.

Rice strongly identifies with the oppressed and the poor. “I am a poor natural dread and I come from the ghetto.” So did his heroes the late Jamaican Reggae legend Bob Marley and Joe Hills, both reggae stars and Rastafarians. Marley died 17 years ago, but Rice was lucky to have met Hills, a Jamaican, when that musician visited Sierra Leone in 1993 and staged several performances.

“I was the only local ‘Rasta’ who had the privilege to stay with Joe Hills throughout his musical pilgrimage to this country, rolling his weed (marijuana) and doing beats with him,” boasts Rice.

Rice loves smoking marijuana. “I just do this, no apology, but I don’t drink alcohol, it is Babylon water and I don’t smoke cigarette, it is Babylon sticks.” he says.

Rice, who is a Marley-look-alike, performs at the Family Choice entertainment centre in Freetown on Fridays and Saturdays. “People tell me all the time that I resemble Bob Marley, when I walk the streets and infact I strive hard to be Bob Marley, in my own right,” he says.

Musa Kallay, who frequents Rice’s shows, agreed. “This is Bob Marley in his second coming. Let us give him the due support,” he says.