Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control - Softcover

King, Stephen A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 160473003X ISBN 13: 9781604730036

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2007

Synopsis

Who changed Bob Marley’s famous peace-and-love anthem into “Come to Jamaica and feel all right?”

When did the Rastafarian fighting white colonial power become the smiling Rastaman spreading beach towels for American tourists?

Drawing on research in social movement theory and protest music, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control traces the history and rise of reggae and the story of how an island nation commandeered the music to fashion an image and entice tourists.

Visitors to Jamaica are often unaware that reggae was a revolutionary music rooted in the suffering of Jamaica’s poor. Rastafarians were once a target of police harassment and public condemnation. Now the music is a marketing tool, and the Rastafarians are no longer a “violent counterculture” but an important symbol of Jamaica’s new cultural heritage.

This book attempts to explain how the Jamaican establishment’s strategies of social control influenced the evolutionary direction of both the music and the Rastafarian movement.

From 1959 to 1971, Jamaica’s popular music became identified with the Rastafarians, a social movement that gave voice to the country’s poor black communities. In response to this challenge, the Jamaican government banned politically controversial reggae songs from the airwaves and jailed or deported Rastafarian leaders.

Yet when reggae became internationally popular in the 1970s, divisions among Rastafarians grew wider, spawning a number of pseudo-Rastafarians who embraced only the external symbolism of this worldwide religion. Exploiting this opportunity, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister, Michael Manley, brought Rastafarian political imagery and themes into the mainstream. Eventually, reggae and Rastafari evolved into Jamaica’s chief cultural commodities and tourist attractions.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen A. King is chairperson and professor of communication at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He has written extensively about rhetoric, public memory, and cultural tourism and is author of Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control and I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta and coauthor (with Roger Davis Gatchet) of Terror and Truth: Civil Rights Tourism and the Mississippi Movement, all published by University Press of Mississippi.

From the Back Cover

How Jamaica fashioned a tourist beacon from reggae music and the Rastafarian revolution

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160473003X
• ISBN 13: 9781604730036
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200