18 | THE VOICE MAY 2023
Dotun Adebayo
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Jah Shaka - revolutionary who inspired all rastas to the end
FORCE OF NATURE: Jah Shaka DJing at WOMAD in 2016 – he was playing revolutionary dub music to the very end; inset below, Peter Tosh smoking a blunt (photos: Getty Images)
Rastas stood for liberation, and had all the answers. That era ended but the dub and reggae pioneer kept the faith alive
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HIS IS going to sound a bit weird, but Jah Shaka may well be the last of the Mohicans. And that is really saying something when it comes to a dread. You see, once upon a time reggae was revolutionary. It was where you gravitated towards if you were not happy with the prejudice you were facing as a Black or brown person and you wanted to do something about it. Otherwise you went down the soul road, if you were unhappy with the prejudice but you couldn’t be bothered to do something about it. For real. All this is back in the seventies when every day was a struggle if you weren’t white. And reggae seemed to have all the answers. It encouraged you to get up and stand up for your rights and told you that Marcus Garvey’s words were still relevant and that Christopher Columbus is a dyam blasted liad for saying that he is the first one who discovered America, when he knew damn well that there were some Arawak Indians and some few Black men there when he arrived. That was the kind of knowledge that made us reggae heads militant. We felt we could just flash our locks and the weakheart drop. Can you believe that? I really believed it. You see why it was revolutionary? Later, Steel Pulse told us about the Handsworth Revolution and Tapper Zukie told us about the MPLA and, I swear, many of us were ready to pick up our AK47s and our M16s and fight for the liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and, primarily, South Africa. That’s the power of music. If we had had the money for the flight we’d probably still be down there now growing our locks even longer and fighting the revolutionary fight, like Che
Guevara, wherever it was occuring. Reggae ain’t like that no more. It lost its revolutionary edge way back when. Peter Tosh’s murder may have knocked the stuffing out of it, but to be honest it seemed like reggae had run out of things to say long before that. And that’s not all. Once upon a time rasta was revolutionary. I don’t know which lost its revolutionary cutting edge first, the chicken or the egg, or whether they go hand in hand. In the seventies, you couldn’t walk the streets in our communties without stumbling over a dread. Every other man, woman and child was a ‘rasta’.
Rastas were the conscious ones. You had to be a conscious man even when you fell in love. It was rasta that stood firm on the frontline of Black liberation. The rasta man was at the forefront of every sort of militancy — the roots, the riots and the resistance, the three Rs of revolution. Rastas walked majestic and talked majestic. You couldn’t argue with them because they were the generation from creation going through all the same tribulation that you were going through.
Rasta seemed to have all the answers... and the solutions. But then Bob Marley died and the gatekeepers of our narrative, in the days before social media, appropriated the music and turned ‘One Drop’ into ‘One Love’... and the rasta revolution was over. I know you’re all going to have some views on this revolutionary thesis of mine, and I welcome your thoughts. But where does Jah Shaka, who recently passed away, fit in in all of this? Those who have followed Shaka for over 40 years,
as I have, will know that Shaka never changed. Not one single bit. Shaka was militant back in the mid 70s and he was militant to the very end. Certainly musically. Fashions have come and fashions have gone but to go to Shaka as recently as a few months ago, the dub music he played was as revolutionary as sound systems were when we couldn’t get in to discos, because the white guys on the doors didn’t want us in there (they wanted our music but not us). What could be more revolutionary in those days than sound systems stringing up in old churches and abandoned warehouses, and welcoming us with open arms for half the price and a more enjoyable experience whilst at the same time keeping our hard-earned money in the community. Now that’s revolutionary. Just the way Garvey planned it.
I was speaking to the comedienne Angie Le Mar the other day about Shaka. Turns out that he was like family to her. Her mum regarded Shaka as her godson and Angie herself regarded him as a brother. It’s a south London ting. Secondly, it’s a south London/ Jamaican ting. And thirdly, as Angie tells me, Shaka and her mother went to the same church. Now that last observation might come as a surprise to those who thought they knew Shaka and have followed his sound from one venue to another over the years. Because Shaka was a rastaman through and through. He pledged his allegiance and faith to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile I Selassie The First, the centrepiece of every Shaka dance. You couldn’t imagine him being anything other than rasta to the core. Indeed, the solitary spotlight in the darkened venues
where Shaka held his sound system sessions shone on a portrait of H.I.M. without any apology. The idea of Shaka going to church doesn’t quite fit into that image and persona by which he is remembered. But then again there were many of us who came out of the church and left it because it wasn’t militant enough. So when the music came and went Shaka stood firm and predominant. And when the revolution came and went Shaka stood firm. And even when he became a tourist attraction with people flying in from all over Japan to attend a session, Shaka would not remove his revolutionary spirit. That was Shaka then. That is Shaka now. And that will be Shaka to the very end. A revolutionary first. A revolutionary second. And a revolutionary to the end. You see why I call the dread the last of the Mohicans?
DOTUN ADEBAYO, BRITAIN’S MOST CELEBRATED BLACK BROADCASTER, IS KNOWN AS THE KING OF THE NIGHTTIME AIRWAVES. ALL VIEWS HERE ARE HIS OWN. LISTEN TO HIM OVERNIGHT ON BBC 5 LIVE FROM 1-5AM SATURDAY MORNINGS - MONDAY MORNINGS & 1AM - 4AM ON BBC RADIO LONDON (WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY MORNINGS). FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER: @dotunadebayo
