E-Book, Englisch, 169 Seiten
Gansinger Radical religious thought in Black popular music. Five Percenters and Bobo Shanti in Rap and Reggae
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-96067-698-0
Verlag: Diplomica Verlag
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 169 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-96067-698-0
Verlag: Diplomica Verlag
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
This book is discussing patterns of radical religious thought in popular forms of Black music. The consistent influence of the Five Percent Nation on Rap music as one of the most esoteric groups among the manifold Black Muslim movements has already gained scholarly attention. However, it shares more than a strong pattern of reversed racism with the Bobo Shanti Order, the most rigid branch of the Rastafarian faith, globally popularized by Dancehall-Reggae artists like Sizzla or Capleton. Authentic devotion or calculated marketing?
Apart from providing a possible answer to this question, the historical shift of Bobo adherents from shunned extremists to firmly anchored personifications of authenticity in mainstream Rastafarian culture is being emphasized. A multi-layered comparative case study attempts to shed light on the re-contextualization of language as well as expressed dogmatic perceptions and symbolism, attitude towards other religious groups and aspects of ethnic discrimination. Further analysis includes the visibility of artists and their references to practical and moral issues directly derived from two obscure ideologies that managed to conquer airwaves and concert halls.
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Chapter “Expressed doctrine and ideology among Bobo Shanti artists: Similarities and differences in regard to Five Percenter Rap”:
A) Re-interpretation of terminology and the establishment of counterknowledge: Burning you with Words, Power and Sound:
Word, sound and power is Jah way / Blessings haffi shower when we hear Jah name.
Word, Sound And Power (Lutan Fyah, 2008a).
By comparing the religious doctrine and terminology of Five Percenters and Bobo Shanti, several similarities can be discovered. Both groups came up with original terms for talks, discussions or teachings as central elements for the dissemination of their traditions and doctrines, for instance – which are referred to as reasoning among Rasta circles and building in Five Percenter terminology. One might as well attest some similarity in the way that Five Percenters refer to putting facts on the table in a discussion as dropping bombs and the use of the Bobo's frequently invoked fire bu(r)n! as a means to express their rejection of information stemming from the imperial powers as lies. That would also imply the superior perceived religious doctrine of the Rastas based on the Old Testament as compared to the King James version of John Paul inna di Vatican, which is symbolically set on fire regularly by adding the aforementioned rhetorical term in Bobo ceremonies or performances of Bobo-related artists. Capleton a.k.a ‘The Fireman’, who originated the music that later on got labeled as Fire Reggae (Zips, 2011, p. 151) by frequent mentioning of the term argued that the expression – alongside the equally popular judgment! – is as well prominently featured in the Old Testament and standard repertoire of a typical Sunday sermon in any Jamaican church (Cooper, 2005, p. 9).
In a similar way, Bobos tend to avoid the term Africa – which is deemed a manipulative name, introduced by white colonial powers to separate them from a glorious past as Ethiopian kings or even Black Israelites, the original inhabitants of the Biblical Jerusalem (Dorman, 2016) – to define their origin. Black Muslim movements such as the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam and also the Five Percenters (Knight, 2013, p. 241) have applied a very much related empowering strategy – with the latter group insisting on being Original Asiatic Black Man or hailing an even more glorious past as nothing else than Gods of the Universe (Curtis & Sigler, 2009). While in Bible-based Rasta terminology, Africa is referred to as Zion – the Promised Land – and the corrupted colonial system as Babylon or Rome in return, Father Allah’s re-defining and symbolical charging of space by turning Manhattan and Harlem into Mecca, Brooklyn into Medina, New Jersey into New Jerusalem or Queens into The Desert (Knight, 2013, p. 63) is clearly grounded on socio-historical influence of Islamic origin.
Obviously, this consistent re-interpretation of words does not stem from random occurrence but is systemetically applied out of a strong awareness for the manifold meanings and implications enclosed in words as symbols and tools for the continuation or either questioning of power structures and distributions. Rastas strongly believe in the relevance of words, power and sounds (Blatter, 2008, p. 19), which is frequently and prominently referred to by Reggae-artists, from recent performers like Sugar Roy & Conrad Crystal (2014) or the iconic Bobo deejay Sizzla Kalonji on his more than seventy full-length releases (Sizzla, 1997b; 2002a; 2007a).
Full time Babylon realise / Sizzla is di element of surprise / And wicked heart, I must put you down / Burning you with words, power and sound.
No Other Like Jah (Sizzla, 1997b).
That idea traces back to ancient African concepts such as Nommo, referring to the power of the spoken word and the positive or negative forces it can bring into existence (Hamlet, 1998; Yancy, 2004; Walker & Kuykendall, 2005). Or as Leach (1966, p. 407), commenting on traditional ritualistic settings has put it:.it is not the case that words are one thing and the rite another. The uttering of the words itself is a ritual. With signifyin’ (Smitherman, 1997, p. 14; Mitchell-Kernan, 1999; Khan, 2012) – the executive technique for identity negotiation within black life (Smith, 2007, p. 204) – a similar African trope lies at the core of the Five Percenters’ trickful way of droppin’ science, that has been described as an expansive form of alternative language for critically tracking one’s own identity against that of others within a shared milieu (p. 204). On a structural level, the building in Five Percenter ciphers – initiated with the obligatory question ‘What’s today’s mathematics?’, that is inviting participating Gods to freely share their associations in regard to the respective date and the Supreme Mathematics – hints towards a common collective dimension and shared elements of encouraged individuality with the reasoning ritual as practiced in Rasta circles (Edmonds, 1998, p. 356).
Thus, the re-contextualization of words as part of a detailed semiotic analysis – described by Price (2003, p. 18) as redefining words so that their sound aligns with its meaning – can be attested a central meaning in both groups. Hence, Rastas would re-shape words in a way that are considered to represent their actual meaning more clear – as opposed to the attempted disguising of the powers that be. Oppressors would turn into down-pressers for instance, and understanding would re-manifest as over-standing (Slade, 2013, p. 2; Sullivan, 2007; Bell, 2011). Pollard (1982) pointed out how the Rastafarian way of life affects the choice of term assigned to articles (p. 36) by concluding that a man who can label ‘meat’ DEADahs, is hardly a man, who eats it (ibid.). He furthermore defined word, sound and power as the command of language over consciousness, and ultimately action (1982, p. 24) and furthermore stressed the functional use of the forceful creative turn of words against English, the language used by the oppressor to ‘increase confusion’ (p. 19). Zips (2006, p. 132) – in referring to the artistic medium of Reggae music – also emphasized the power of the reasoning or the palaver.
‘Words, Sounds, and Power’ are therefore seen as the main means or weapon to overcome historical and contemporary forms of injustice, structural inequality, and unilateral (mis)use of (military and economic power (Zips, 2006, p. 132).
Similarly, (b)elieving in the subtle power of words to affect a persons’s mindstate, Father Allah a.k.a. Clarence 13X Smith altered the language of his followers to remove all negative forces (Knight, 2013, p. 14) in the same rigorous way, which might be illustrated by the banning of hello for invoking the concept of hell by its mentioning and the instruction to replace it with peace. In this line of thought, sexism and racism could be destroyed by avoiding the words that represented them, which resulted in the use of ‘so-called men’ and those who call themselves women’ – as well as people of light complexion for Caucasians (p. 14). Further application of these empowerment strategies can be found in the use of Gods, earths and universes or sun, moon and stars to refer to man, woman and child, signifying the godly descendance of the Black Man according to Five Percenter doctrine. Gibbs (2003) even suggested a direct line of this conception with the Indian cult of Thugee, a secretive and organized group worshipping the Indian deity Kali – the Black Goddess – who, they assumed, sanctioned and required murder on her behalf (p. 82), that presented a considerable threat to the colonizing claims of the British empire (ibid.):
It was the ontology and philosophy of the Supreme Black Goddess and its relationship to the power structure in India in the mid-1800s that brought the word ‘thug’ into the English language. The ‘thuggish’ view of power is mirrored in America today by those who live the philosophy and ontology of the ‘Supreme Black God’, and the ‘thuggish’ relationship to powers is mirrored in their respective histories.
He furthermore stressed the important role of artists affiliated with the ideology in planting rather sophisticated, specific – and obscure, some might argue – religious concepts deep within the minds of mainstream culture consumers via highly successful musical efforts (Gibbs, 2003, p. 86-87):
Hit records played regularly on commercial radio hide in plain sight the religious mode of being and the metaphysics that are today’s counterpart to the religious devotion of the original Thugs. This modern thug’s metaphysics comes from the group commonly known as The Five Percenters.
One of the motivations for the strong incorporation of Five Percenter terminology in Hip Hop during the late 1980s and early 1990s might simply stem from an attempt of the artists to distinguish themselves from the then popularized Gangsta Rap and add some mystery to their artistic appearance and creative output (Gosa, 2011, p. 12). On the other hand, it might as well be considered as an effective tool of resistance and identity maintenance for the socially underpriviliged, generating a system of codes and hidden meanings as part of a more complex alternative knowledge, questioning the interpretative sovereignty of mainstream society (p.12). As such, this carefully crafted counterknowledge has the power to challenge the establishment by providing an alternative knowledge system intended to entertain while challenging white dominated knowledge industries such as academia or the mainstream press (p. 5). Naturally, the publication of these well kept codes – that would traditionally be transferred and memorized from person to person (Gibbs, 2003, p. 91) in a teacher and initiate-context – has been met with mixed emotions by the keepers of the knowledge. When Wu-Tang’s RZA – spelled out as Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah in Supreme Alphabet – contributed to the de-mystification of the codes by publishing his book The Tao of Wu (RZA, 2009), he faced harsh criticism from within the Five Percenters for his unauthorized revealing of the movements’ secret doctrine – next to supportive voices, appreciating the wide-scale dissemination of the teachings (Knight, 2013, p. 205).
Unlike certain considerations (Semaj, 2013), the terminology used by Bobo deejays – which might come across as rather aggressive for some ears – has not been introduced by these artists but gradually developed among Rastafarian circles, as demonstrated earlier. On the contrary, the coded language developed and applied by Five Percenters has been evaluated as originating a considerable amount of basic Hip Hop vocabulary (Knight, 2013, p.178), starting from the use of G as short for God – which later on has been and still is mistakenly interpreted as meaning Gangsta. Although Five Percenter influence could be detected around Hip Hop since its early days – the B-Boy stance later on applied by breakdancers stems from the square stance Five Percenters would form around DJs and equipment, intending to intimidate potential thieves and robbers –, it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that more or less clear depictions of their secret knowledge were brought to the forefront of things. However, as noted by Knight (2013, p. 186):
Between rap’s world-wide popularity and the Five Percenters’ insider language and folklore, out-right proselytism like Brand Nubian’s ‘Ain’t No Mystery’ and the esotericism of Rakim’s ‘The Mystery,’ a God emcee can have it both ways. He can use the medium to teach the world, but while millions listen, he can also engage his Five Percenter family in a private conversation.
