Reggae Revolutionary Discourse

In the 1970s, the African identity long nurtured among Jamaica’s lowest classes found a powerful voice in reggae, as soundsystems amplified ideas that had previously circulated only sotto voce. Rastafari, then a marginalized and often persecuted Afro-centric movement, merged with the newly emerging reggae beat, itself a wholly Jamaican creation. This encounter marked a turning point for both reggae and Rastafari, bringing to Jamaica and to the world the expression of an oppressed people whom Western cultural imperialism had deemed culturally and artistically inferior. Yet how did Rastafari artists structure ideas of resistance and revolution within this new genre? Existing scholarship has examined the relationship between reggae, Rastafari, social criticism and political discourse. Lyrics, however, have tended to support or complement scholars’ arguments rather than serve as the central object of analysis. Moreover, reggae’s deep connection with Jamaican culture and oral tradition has frequently been overlooked, perhaps because of the genre’s international reach. This article argues that reggae’s revolutionary discourse is both a reflection on its own times and the expression of a wider Afro-Jamaican tradition. Drawing on a systematic lyrical analysis, it explores some of the core elements of this discourse. The study begins with a brief overview of Jamaican histories of resistance and “spiritual battle.” It then outlines its methodology, introducing the work of Gordon K. Lewis (1983) and clarifying its relevance to the analysis, which constitutes the main focus of the article. While lyrics are only one component of the genre, and sound and performance carry equally strong subversive power, the analysis concentrates on the lyrical word, ideally to be complemented by study of reggae’s musical and performative dimensions. The corpus comprises the work of Jamaican artists who openly embraced Rastafari during the 1970s, marking the rise of a subgenre commonly known as roots reggae, a body of music marked by a strong Rastafari consciousness. By placing lyrics at the center of inquiry, the article seeks to illuminate reggae’s revolutionary thought as a distinctly Afro-Jamaican system of ideas.