Word: ganja
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...violence to achieve his revolutionary aims. This breaks with his religious ideology--Rastafarianism--which usually extolls pacifism. Marley is a Rasta, a sect whose members believe they are the real lost tribes of Israel, and who revere Haile Selassie, former Ethiopian emporer, as their God. They smoke ganja ritually as a key part of their religion. Rastafarians have always been a peaceful folk. Marley's decision to endorse violence despite his Rastafarian commitment indicates how desperate he thinks the situation has grown in Jamaica...
...then again, it's hard to know what ever goes through Marley's brain. He smokes enough ganja each day to send his mind into a permanent orbit around Neptune. In interviews, he is often incoherent. In a new book called Reggae Bloodlines, Stephen Davis, former associate editor of Rolling Stone, asked Marley how he felt about his Rastafarian friends who point to Marley's car as a sign of Marley's increasing materialism. Marley responded, "Well, BMW not the system. Babylon the system. some say BMW mean Bob Marley and Wailers. BMW mean...British Made War car or something...
...Marley sings about his life and the lives of his parents, friends and family in the poverty-stricken, politically-torn wasteland of Jamaica--where music and ganja are the accepted antidotes for hunger, humiliation, wage labor and police brutality. He comes from Kingston, more specifically, Trenchtown--a filthy oasis of life in Jamaica's post-colonial, morally-bankrupt desert...
Marley, you see, is a Rastafarian--one of about 144,000 in Jamaica, or so they claim. Rastas believe, as Marley sings, that "life is worth much more than gold, it's pathetic the whole world is in a rat race, talk is cheap," that ganja is the healer of nations and the oppressors of the Rastas are devils. He also believes that he and his fellow Rastas are the lost tribes of Israel and that one day they must return to Ethiopia, their homeland, to live in peace...
...conflicts continue. The Jamaican elite tells the Rastas they can get jobs if they cut their dreadlocks and quit smoking ganja. The Rastas refuse and, consequently, remain hungry. Even if they did cut their locks it is questionable whether there are enough jobs in Jamaica. Instead, the Rastas try to survive in communes. There they can smoke dope all day as long as they aren't caught by the police; they can sing beautiful songs; and occasionally riot over their squalor...