Gerald Hausman - The Kebra Nagast: The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith from Ethiopia and Jamaica

This book is about the mind. It is about black history, my history, black my story. But you must see the way words can mislead because this book is not his story, but our story. When I was in school I used to think a lot about the English language and how words are used in ways that are not always what we think. History, his story, words like di-ed and liv-ed. The word for lived should be livity. We live; that is all.

In school, when we were taught of the slave trade, we did not hear of the glory of the kings and the Kebra Nagast. We heard about his story. We did not hear of African glory, black my story, the truth as revealed in the Kebra Nagast. We came to realize that even the Bible is just a version of the truth, and all of these versions are a part of the whole, a vision of what happened, is happening, and will happen.

My father said, Its the last quarter before the year 2000, and righteousnessthe positive way of thinkingmust win. As I see it, the year 2000 is based on a Roman system of time measurement. The original counting of time, calendar days, months, and years, is not even near 2,000 yet. So the real calendar should have more significance, be rooted in spirituality, rooted in God-belief. I dont personally celebrate the New Year or Christmas, and each time is just time that continues along. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. Every day.

What my father said, though, is prophecy. There is no way the negative can ultimately conquer. When the whole battle, the whole war, is won, it will be good things that prosper; goodness must prosper in the end.

Sometimes people think there is a magical reality in the things that we write, or say, or do, as when these lines of mine were written:

Above my bed, Bobs face I saw, my daddy

looking at me so passionately, little brother.

Well, in his eyes I saw the truth, mommy,

the truth of a Rastaman,

the truth of a iyaman.

We understand, however, that things must come, and we have to let them out, let them happen. Not supernatural experience but inspiration and vision: real, not magical. At times I wonder if I myself have some knowledge of things beyond my existence, but I dont think too deep, just lightly. The spirit lives on. The spiritual sense will always be here, as the music will be here; my fathers music lives as he lives in the music.

I was born at home in Trenchtown. And the experience of the ghetto in those days, when I was coming up, was not the same as what my father experienced in terms of the violence and the mind-set of the people. My life didnt have sufferation. We did not go through the same things that my father went through, but its not only physical experience that makes you what you are: Jah gives the inspiration and my music is based more upon a spiritual level than a physical one. The music comes from Jah, but I use my own inner eye, my third eye, to make the music. If it takes another century for people to understand, it is all right. I dont rush it. I wait.

If a song makes sense, it will always be there for people to understand. Sometime, some way, somehow, they will get the message. Maybe not in the time that we expect, or want. But the work that were doing is not just for now. It is for all time. Naturally, you may doubt and question (its all right to do so), but when I think of Jesus Christ, Marcus Garvey, my fatherwho am I to complain or question? Jesus Christ suffered so muchif I get a little doubt, it means so little.

A couple of years ago a reporter asked me, Will you live to see the freedom of South Africa? and I answered, Of course. My generation is a positive generation, and theres so much more to go, as the self is changing. Most important, the human creature needs to evolve into a loving creature. I mean, if you dont love, what are you?

But we can never stop the struggle. I have dreams for the upliftment of my people, but I am not at the point where I can reach the fulfillment of my dreams. Still, the struggle cannot be taken away; it was not given to us, it was born in us. And it runs through our veins and creates the urge to help people. It was not something that I read in a book, or heard from a friend. I was always this way. So no matter where I live, or what fame comes to me (these things can be taken awaymoney comes, money goes), the struggle is always in the blood.

Each person must go through his own tribulations until spiritual enlightenment takes placeuntil he sees love of life, love of self, love of tree, love of bird, love of bee. Everybody has to go through this. But to those who see me perform, I am perhaps only a thought in their minds. They see what they want to see, not knowing what I have been through in order to reach the place that I have come to.

So its not just my father that made me what I amits me as well. And people who see me sing cannot see the struggle that is behind the words that I sing. And its as I said in the beginning, it is all in the mind, like the calendar of our beginnings. And these words here, now. Jah said to me, Dont worry about what you are going to say. Dont worry, the words will come.

And like the words in the Kebra Nagast, they come in their own time.

Ziggy Marley