Rasta

enough said...

I, Jacob Silverman, have a lot of experience with rastafarianism. It is such an interesting topic. And, I do not think much about it all the time. I do not listen to reggae music all the time anymore. So I would just love to place carefully and with respect (and “iration” whatever that means) some of my thoughts before they go away.

I was, no doubt, initially attracted by the music. It was when I heard Bob Marley’s “Exodus” album. I loved it; I just did not care much for the song called “Exodus.” Every other song I thought great. On albums, sometimes you like all the songs and sometimes there is only one good one on the record. This is the seventies.

In 1979, I went to Los Angeles to see what was wrong with my brain. But it was there that they played reggae on the radio, for an hour every week. The was also an authentic reggae record store. Although my brain already was somehow “different,” I did not really go crazy until the “therapy” I took. I do not want to go into that.

So, at that time I was very intrepid and if I really wanted to do something I did it. So I bought my Jamaican reggae records there (these are by the way not the records the big companies put out, but local records from Jamaica). After the therapy kicked my pants I returned to Chicago to discover there was another good Jamaican record store. By this time I had lots of reggae records.

There were many deep messages in the lyrics. Well suffice to say I really loved music. I have no desire to crow about this. But rasta is even more than the music!

Well, I just now searched “rasta” on duckduckgo. I read over it and something came out of it: the emphasis that the rastafarian movement puts on being natural. That is the thing that came through on the websites I read. Rastas are known to shun junk food; they have a rule that their food must be “ital” (vital: get it?).

So this time when I read about rastafarianism it was is the naturalness I notice. Rasta is pure, natural, and very inspiring.

It is a nice memory to think abut all those pure things I once believed in!

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I was able to listen to this here. It is called “dub” and it was originally created using the tape of a song with vocals, but the vocals and most of the music has been removed and only the music of bass and drums and a few occasional visits to the original track. Well it is not really meant to be put into words anyways! It is made by the engineer in the studio and it is a creation based on a record they were putting out -a regular song with lyrics, etc. -but this is the dub version. Usually the back side of the vocal version. This one may be a new recording but it does sound in the spirit of what I remember. It is very well-done; starts well, ends well.

Pretty much like the old stuff… a little short…. (Well, that purple “Continue” button is beckoning. Gotta go…)