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Rastafarianism is a religion also called Rasta. It is a form of Christianity that still follows some primitive Jewish and ancient Egyptian customs. Let me give you an example: they believe in Jah, or Jehovah, and they recognize Ra, the Egyptian god of Sun. The reggae music was born on Jamaica an island south of Cuba. This you can see on this transparency. The capital of Jamaica is Kingston a town with about 600 000 inhabitants.
The grandfather of Rasta was Marcus Garvey who was born 58 years earlier than of Bob Marley. At the beginning of the twenties he tried to move settlements of the blacks from the USA to Africa into Liberia. Because the hoped aim in life of the Rastas was the return to the praised country, the black continent. But Garvey didn't succeed in it.
He justified his teaching from the Bible and he saw in Ras Tafari Makkonen the 111th emperor from Ethiopia the son of Jah. Ras Tafari still called himself Haile Selassie I., \"the power of the three agreement\" and gave himself the title "king of the kings".
On April 21st 1966 Haile Selassie arrived at the airport to an official state visit to Jamaica. About 100.000 people expected him. It was a rainy morning but the Rastas said: \"As soon as our God arrives, the rain will stop\". And as the machine actually landed, the Sun was shining. For the Rastas this was a sign of god as they called it. And from this time on the sect got more follower.
The Rastamen have their own language, that is a strange mixture of Jamaica English, Bible quotations, saying wisdom's and African words. One of the most used word of Rastamen is I. With I the Rastas mean I and God are in common. Today there are a lot of various groupings of Rastas with about one hundred thousand members. The traditional Rastas counter that anyone is welcomed if he fights for peace and love, wheater he or she is black or white. And so it cannot be denied that the Rastafarianism religion is better than the christen one.
One of the best known Rasta was Bob Marley. Nobody knows how Bob Marley became member of these sect but with the beginning of the early 60th he was already known as a follower of Rasta. As a Rasta he tried to do as much as possible for the black and white people especially for the children who lived in the ghetto of Trenchtown.
As Haile Selassie died in 1975, Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder gave a concert in the stadium of Kingston. The message they sent out on this concert was bright and clear for everyone who hear it: "God is alive not dead".
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