Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley
1945 - 1981

On February 10th 1966 Bob married Rita Anderson, but the very next day he left his bride to go to America. Discouraged by the Jamaican music business, he needed to find another way. In October 1966, Marley came back to Jamaica with $700 in his pocket. Money made as a dishwasher, laboratory-assistant, and a forklift driver and from manning the assembly line at a Chrysler automobile plant. With this money he got himself his first electric guitar, and wanted to start his own recordlabel. But in the meantime, something substantial had happened.
The Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia had visited Jamaica. To the Rastafaris in Jamaica, this was nothing less than the Messiahs incarnation on Jamaican soil.

Now, I would really love to give an in-dept explaination of what the Rastafarism is all about, but for time and space-saving reasons I´ll just keep to a minimum. In short, the Rastafaris believe in The Bible, but they tend to interpret it a bit differently than our traditional Christianity. In can be described in short as: Rastafarism is a political / religious movement which was formed in Jamaica in the 1930s as an opposition to economical and racial oppression. The Rastafaris regarded the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as the black Messiah and worshiped him under his original name RAS (His title as the Prince) and TAFARI (his original forename). From the 1960s the Rastafarism was influenced by ani-imperialism and mysticism, and later strongly connected to the reggae music.

But it would also be of some importance to say that for the Rastats, the well-known and so-called dreadlocks, is an important symbol on many different levels. Besides representing a natural state, the dreadlocks is symbol of pride among the rastafaris, and a rebellion against the western society of imperialism, bourgeoisie lifestyle, money, beauty and other superficial values; a rebellion against authorities and society in general. The word dreadlock comes from the word dread (fear), and have troughout times frightened every western society in the same way that ordianry long hair has. Remember The Beatles? Another thing about the Rastas, is that they belive the Bible in several places encourages the use of Ganja (marihuana) – yet another thing that scares the majority of the society.