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The Rastafarian religion of Jamaica came into prominence in the
late 1960s and early 1970s and was given international exposure
through the music of one of its main exponents - Bob Marley. Music,
and Reggae music in particular, was the centrepiece of Rasta
creativity but Rastafarianism gave rise to a whole new cultural
movement of which visual art was one of the many components.
`Official' recognition of Rasta art may be traced to the year 1980
when the National Gallery of Jamaica installed a new section
dedicated to `intuitive' artists, that is, untrained artists who
were previously described as primitive or naive. The works of
Rastafarians were prominent among these intuitive including those
of Albert Artwell, Ras Dizzy, Ras Daniel Hartman and Leonard Daley,
to name a few. Beyond that however, little recognition has been
given to Rastafarian art as a particular genre within Jamaica, and
the only known attempt to document and survey the art and
handicraft of Rastafarians was in the form of an exhibition
catalogue prepared for an exhibition in Germany in 1980 and later
updated for a second exhibition in Germany. Decades after that
first catalogue was produced, comes its first English translation -
Rastafarian Art by Wolfgang Bender, an ethnomusicologist and ector
of the African Music Archives in the Institute for Ethnology and
African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. The
works presented in this volume are meant to introduce a selection
of Rastafarian artists from Jamaica. The collection is accompanied
by photographs that depict everyday life among Rastas and scenes
from the environment in which the artists live. In addition, there
are interviews with a number of the artists, a chronology of events
in the development of the Rastafarian movement and Rastafarian art,
and an index of the artists and their works.
Jamaica's rich culture is known the world over; and every aspect of
this culture has been influenced by Jamaica's African heritage.
From speech to dress, and spirituality to dance, from food to
folklore and from music to art and religion, African retentions
from the time of slavery have become more than preserved aspects of
Jamaica's past; African traditions have become part and parcel of
Jamaican culture. In this Reader, Coester and Bender have compiled
some of the most important ethnographic work by noted researchers
which, although previously published, have been exceptionally
difficult to access by the growing community of scholars of
African-Caribbean and Jamaican studies. Several seminal articles on
aspects of African-Jamaican culture are included in this rich and
valuable collection that describes and analyses the elements that
make up a distinctive African-Jamaican ethos.
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