Rastafari and I

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1:23Naya Binghi drums are the sacred heartbeat of the Rastafari faith. I stood listening to them in Shashamani in Ethiopia. The place I was taught is the homeland, the promised land. I felt at home, I felt these are my people. When I came here, I saw so much people that I knew. From Jamaica, from England, from America. So this is where I love. I'm named after Haile Selassie, Rastafari's spiritual figurehead. So I feel like I should be at home in Shashamani too. But as I listened to the drums, I wasn't sure whether I'd come home or if I was trying to live a dream that was never really mine.

2:11This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Silas Gray, and in this episode of Heart and Soul, I travel to Ethiopia for the first time. As I ask, can I find a way to feel comfortable with this legacy I've inherited through my name? A legacy bestowed on me by my dad.

2:38Before I set off for Ethiopia I went to see him Why did you decide to name me after Haide Selassie? I was immensely proud I was going to have a son I was immensely proud that my son was going to be born The year 1992 The centenary of the king The king being Haile Selassie, who was born in 1892 in Ethiopia. But me and your mother then wanted some sort of name for you that had meaning. So we chose to go biblical. So we chose the name Silas. Silas being the messenger of Paul. And Emmanuel as God be with you. Now, when I put them together or you write them on paper, your name will call Silas E. Silas E.

3:29Selassie. We celebrated that year. You know what I mean? We're in my dad's living room in Oxford, a small city in the south of England, the place where I grew up. He's a short raster man with glasses who wears a bandana to cover his deteriorating dreadlocks. There are three brown leather armchairs and we're both sitting in our usual spots. Obviously, I've wanted to go to Ethiopia for ages, but the reason why I haven't gone in all this time is because I've felt guilty, maybe. Why? For what? The guilt stems from I'm going there to discover some stuff, to like, you know, see the place. I'm also going to challenge.

4:17Okay. I expected that from you anyway. I'm going to go and sort of prove it's just another place.

4:31Throughout my childhood, in the 90s and noughties, Ethiopia felt like much more than just another place on the map. It's over 5 ,000 miles away from Oxford, yet Ethiopia was all around me, and it still is. Ornaments and ashtrays coloured in Ethiopia's flag colours of red, gold and green crowd the shelves. Portraits of Emperor Haile Selassie watch over the space from the walls. And then there's the soundtrack. Constant, booming references to Ethiopia and Haile Selassie in the roots reggae and dub music my dad has always played, on repeat. I didn't buy the album, but I bought some singles. Oh, your son's just a nice play.

5:10Fire! In fact, when I was growing up, it took me a while to realise I'm not actually Ethiopian myself. As it turns out, I'm Jamaican, and so is my dad. His dad, my granddad, moved over to England in the early 1960s as part of the Windrush generation. The Empire Windrush brings to Britain 500 Jamaicans. Jamaica is where the Rastafari movement began in the 1920s. Black people in Jamaica wanted to be free from a white colonial system and repatriate back to Africa. Around this time, the black political activist Marcus Garvey famously told his followers, look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned.

5:53God of the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages. That is a God in whom we believe, but we shall worship him through the spectacles of Ethiopia. So when Rastafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930, the movement found both its name and its spiritual figurehead. Built on Christianity, the Rastafari movement saw the emperor as a living black messiah who would lead them out of exile. Four decades later, in the 1970s, Bob Marley spread the word of Rastafari, which in turn had a strong influence on second-generation Jamaicans in the UK, like my dad. He was searching for freedom from the system too.

6:29I've always thought I was a mixed-race guy, but for some reason I was predominantly named as being black. And being black, talking back in the 70s, we didn't fit in. I mean, there was nothing for us to go to, nothing for us to hang on to, nothing for us to look up to. As a black person, I would say, as a black person, I mean, I wanted to know the truth. And what made me discover Rasta was seeking the truth, really. Dad, I've always wanted to ask you, how did your dad feel when you became Rastafarian?

7:08He would disown me. These are his own exact words. If you put damn locks on your head, don't call me your father again. Wow.

7:23Finding Rasta clearly wasn't an easy ride for my dad. It was an identity he had to fight for. And because it cost him so much, I've always known how desperately he wants me to carry on that legacy.

7:37When I was young, Rastafarians were cool. People used to say to me, Yo, is that your dad? He's well cool. Reggae was cool There was a pride in belonging to an alternative culture But one day, my feelings about Rastafari and everything my dad has taught me was challenged

8:02Maybe around ten years ago I was in my mid-twenties, living in South London I jumped in a taxi on the way to work and noticed the air freshener was an Ethiopian flag I told the taxi driver proudly, Hey, I'm named after Haile Selassie. He looked at me and smiled at my naivety. He said coldly, Haile Selassie was the reason my grandparents are dead.

8:35It turns out the version of Haile Selassie I grew up with didn't include what happened at the end of his rule. In 1973, ITV programmed this week broke the news of a famine that had spread across parts of Ethiopia. And criticism grew over how Haile Selassie handled it. Once they had cattle, land and houses. They sold them all to buy food. Now they have only their rags. They're destitute. That could have been how the taxi driver's grandparents died. For the last decade, carrying Haile Selassie around has felt heavy. And now I need to find a way I can either shake it off or at least sit comfortably with my association to a controversial figure and the movement that follows him.

9:21So, I'm going to do something that Dad has never done and book a flight straight to Ethiopia.

9:43160 miles southwest of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, is a dusty, rural city called Shashamani. It's become the spiritual homeland of Rastafari. I think I half expected Shashamani's roads to be paved in the Rastafarian and Ethiopian colours of red, gold and green. But they're not, of course. And as I wander around, I can't even see any dreadlocks. But there is at least one Rastafarian who I know. Who's your father? Colin. Short Rastaman glasses from Oxford. Yeah, yeah. I know Colin well, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. We go together. Yeah. Wicked. Bless up, man. So good to see you. Good to see you here in Ethiopia.

10:30Yeah, man. I know Teddy Dan from back in Oxford. He knows my dad and I grew up playing with his sons. He took the leap and moved out here in 1986. And although he still travels, Shashamani is a place he proudly calls his home. My father's never been here, so I wanted to come. You have to come for him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Teddy gave me the backstory as to how Rastafarians came to encounter the land of Shashamani. Haile Selassie gave the 500 hectare land. Yeah. And he gave it to the black people of the world outside. And it's the Rastafarians now that keep the promise of the land and end up coming to the land.

11:17When he arrived in Shashamani in the 1980s, the dream was still in its golden era. At its peak, estimates suggest between 1 ,000 and 2 ,500 Rastafarians from all over the world made up the community. I felt as though this is what I've always wanted. When I came home, people were easier, you know. So for me, and the thing what I did love as well was they hug you. And I'm a hugger. I love to, I don't meet people, I don't really hug them. Shashamani became a sanctuary for Teddy and other Rastafari, the antidote to a Britain that felt like it didn't want them.

12:16I grew up in a different time, and whilst my experience in Britain hasn't been perfect, It was vastly different from the overt hostility my dad and Teddy faced. Black British culture was everywhere. On the television, in music, and on the football pitch. Because of that, I've never felt the desperate need to look across the ocean or an entire continent just to find my people. Maybe that's the reason why being Rasta hasn't had the same appeal for me as it did for my dad.

12:59OK. OK, cool. See you in a bit. Teddy sensed I was looking for something more than just a history lesson and he told me about a concert taking place that evening. I headed downtown to a yard with big concrete walls, half covered by one of those corrugated iron roofs. As I entered, Naya Bingy drums were blessing the venue while people started to flood in.

13:28I saw three generations of Rastafari under one roof. Original pioneers with silver locks and red, gold and green attire standing alongside the local kids in their European football shirts.

13:45Today, there are about 400 Rastafari living in Shashamani and it felt like they were all there that night.

13:56When I introduced myself as Silas, faces lit up. I was welcomed as one of them, a raster. So he's named me after Haile Selassie. My name's Silas, it's like Selassie. There was an all too familiar smell of marijuana smoke. Elders speak in Jamaican patwa and West Indian food selling out the back. I was having a great time. I like this, this is like, being here, it feels like the dancers I go to in England. Yeah, yeah, it feels like the Yardi dancers. But there was something that kept happening throughout the night that really irked me. Between almost every song, someone would grab the mic and give a serious and quite urgent speech.

14:40And to be honest, it was a bit of a vibe kill.

14:51There was chanting and a sense of devotion, a reminder that Rastafari is not just a culture, but for some, it's also a deeply disciplined faith.

15:03And then, like a sermon from the stage, came these desperate pleas for the youth to carry on the legacy. And even though they weren't talking to me, I felt that familiar pressure. It made me think of my dad. He would have loved tonight.

15:23Looking at the youth in the venue made me wonder. How does the next generation here in Shashamani handle the weight of expectations from their elders? And what does being Rastafari mean to them?

15:37As the night went on and the vibe died down, I decided to switch off my recorder and leave. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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16:55Everybody asks me the first thing, even my English. They say I speak better English than them. The morning after the concert, I spoke with Raphael. He's about my age and in many ways he's my Ethiopian mirror image. We're both sons of the movement, shaped by our father's convictions. But unlike me, Raphael has spent his whole life navigating all of this right inside of the Promised Land. Like I was saying, it was really beautiful yesterday seeing the community together. Like, I'm not a youth here, but in the moment I felt like I put myself in the shoes of the Rastafari youth here and it made me feel this sense of pressure.

17:32Like, the elders are saying, carry our culture, carry this legacy. I haven't gone through what my dad's gone through and I wonder if that's why Rasta hasn't caught me in the way it caught him. We passed that stage. What our generation really need to focus on is how to continue the culture and how to keep it. for the next, next coming generation. When all these elders pass away, all right, what's going to happen? Is this culture going to continue? Is we going to take it up serious like them? Because in their time, they were very serious in the culture and everything. And that's why it's still alive.

18:06And we want to keep it alive. I want to be one of the person who want to keep it alive. Yeah. Do you consider yourself Rasta? Of course, yeah. Would you consider me Rasta? Yes, of course. Especially for us who were born in it, you know, It's within our heart. It's hard to break away from it because we were born in it, you know? Within time, yes, you can also represent yourself as a Rastafari.

18:35Raphael, a bit like myself, wants to carry the culture of Rastafari. The language, the music, the traditions. He says the fire doesn't burn as bright for him as it did for his dad, but he still very much considers himself to be a Rastafarian. I, on the other hand, am not sure if I do enough to be considered one nor am I sure if I want to be considered one. I need to get some clarity on what it takes. Nice. We find a spot and we have a nice reason. Yeah. Yeah. But please don't make it too long. Rastrubin is an elder who's lived in Shashamani for 20 years although he's been Rastafarian for over 60.

19:19He's seen the struggle and history and he's met a thousand people like me. I wondered if he saw a Rastafarian sitting in front of him. You good? So we sat down for a reasoning, a sharing of deep wisdom. I've experienced some struggle in life but not like my dad has and I wonder if maybe that's why I haven't really found Rasta because I'm not a bit. I would tell you you're not playing Rasta, man. Look where you're there. Look what you're doing now. A Rasta mission you're on, you know? Maybe, yeah. You're on a Rasta mission, so... I don't tell you Rasta is a vibration. A positive vibration.

20:08So, you're on the right track. Rast Rubin told me that just by being here and asking these questions I was showing myself to be a Rasta a Rasta on a mission but to me this mission feels like more of a challenge since I'm still unsure of the man at the top of it like I said I'm named after Haile Selassie and I've always been quite proud of it of course until very recently I've met some Ethiopians who have told me some of the problematic things he may have done. And it's made me sort of battle with this legacy that I have following his name. Nothing wrong with your name, man. It's a blessing that you have.

20:53Go and answer to your name and feel proud of your name. Nothing wrong with Eilisilas. Sorry I didn't have his full name. Emperor Eilisilas, yeah. I'm sorry I didn't get that name. That's right. Russ Rubin's take on Haile Selassie is similar to my dad's. There's good and bad in everything. People can look to another side of the walk and have a different point of view than him. I stand by what he said, what he'd done. To me, he was the beginning to do the right thing, and it was about truth. It was all about truth. There's corruption everywhere. In everything, in everyone. In everyone there is good and bad.

21:34But history isn't that simple. My name is Johannes Weldemariam. I was born in Eritrea, although I grew up in Addis Ababa. I was very close to Haile Selassie's palace. As a child, you know, I used to walk across the palace to go to school. Dr. Johannes moved to the US to go to university. He then became a college professor and has worked in international relations and political science for the past 25 years. People like me are not about to romanticize the highly celeste. He represents everything that was evil for us. He was very much of an imperial ruler. The divide and rule was his way. I mean, there was serious hierarchy.