Babylon a fall!

[imomus]

One thing the current financial crisis ought to be making us say (though I haven't seen anyone saying it yet) is "Shit, the Rastafarians were right -- Babylon a fall!". These past couple of weeks have seen the Rastafarian concept of Babylon looking stronger and smarter, and our own concepts about the efficiency and intelligence of the market system looking ever weaker and more stupid. If Bush and Blair and Brown thought that Babylon would save us, it's now becoming clear that it won't. Instead, Babylon is more likely to do what the Rastafarians have been telling us all along it will: Babylon is likely "a fall".



The Rastafarian concept of Babylon is one we all understand in its broad outline. Babylon is the white man's world, the oppressor's world, the world of the slave-taker and slave-trader, the world in which precious spiritual things are reduced to mere commodities. It's a world characterized by greed and dishonesty, a corrupt and decadent world, a world with no respect for nature and no respect for humanity. One should have as little to do with it as possible -- one shouldn't deal with Babylon. For, because of its endemic vices and iniquities, Babylon shall fade and Babylon shall fall, just like the reggae songs tell us.

Babylon in reggae and in Rastafarianism is a catch-all phrase, a metaphor. The real, historical Babylon, Wikipedia tells us, "was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers (55 mi) south of Baghdad." Interestingly, the current-day location of Babylon is occupied by the Americans, who are without a doubt the current-day metaphorical Babylonians too. Ominously, though, "all that remains today of the ancient famed city of Babylon is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Iraq." Babylon was a holy city by 2300 BC and the seat of an empire by 612 BC. It boasted a globalization-friendly skyscraper in the form of the Tower of Babel and a world-standard tourist attraction in the form of the Hanging Gardens. And yet, by 141BC, Babylon was to be found "in complete desolation and obscurity". Babylon a fall.



We could call Babylon, the Rastafarian concept, a "cautionary metaphor". By tunnelling far back into the past, the Rastafarians point to the fall of one empire, map it to the current empire, and preview, by extension and with relish, its fall too.

As David Bardfield explains in The Roots of Babylon (The Dread Library), the concept as it appears in Rastafarianism comes from Marcus Garvey's teachings, which map the exile of African slaves in the Caribbean to the exile of Jews into Babylon, as described in The Bible. It's a word which is shorthand for a whole political program: "Instead of saying "Injustice must fall", "Poverty must be alleviated", or "Jamaican legislation must represent its people", a Rasta need only say "Babylon must fall".

Babylon represents a range of corrupt and unjust institutions: politics, police, laws, even cities are "Babylon".

What's really remarkable is that the speeches from both sides of the current US presidential debates could very easily be reframed (I'm sure there's a text engine out there that could do it with cut and paste) in Rastafarian terms. When McCain and Obama agree that "Washington is broken, and Wall Street is broken", or when they talk about greed and corruption being endemic, they're basically recognizing that they live in Babylon. Even Bush, admitting that the $700 billion bailout may not solve the financial crisis, is warning us that Babylon may not be easily fixable. It may, indeed, fall. In fact, in a long enough perspective, it's absolutely sure to.

Babylon has been a theme in my own music -- I even put an image of Haile Selassie on the inside of my 2006 album Ocky Milk. Here's a clip from a track on my forthcoming Joemus album which pits "the Babylon King" against his nemesis, a "Jahwise Hammer":

Jahwise Hammer of the Babylon King (excerpt) stereo mp3 file, 1.4 MB, 1 min 45 secs

Maybe one day this song will bring it all back: exactly where you were when Babylon began a fall.

Comments

[bricology.livejournal.com]

From the earliest recorded history through the mid-19th century, Africa endured the same waves of invasion as did Europe, from Ireland to Greece, from Gibraltar to Finland, so there's nothing unique about their experiences. During ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome -- right up to the medieval period, groups of all different ethnicities and tribes throughout Europe were captured and enslaved.

There was a relatively brief period of European colonial rule in Africa, but before Africa even came into contact with white Europeans, it was a violent, superstitious place, and it remained so even after the colonies were dismantled and the European "invasion" took the form of charities and aid-workers, of being perpetually reinforced against famine and plague.

Of course Africa had no Magna Carta, no habeas corpus, no Miranda, no civil rights movement, etc., until the Europeans came. It was a patriarchal, theocratic, feudal, tribal society where women were subjugated and black-on-black brutality was the norm. It was rule by might, blessed by shamans. Of course, this doesn't excuse the brutality that Europeans and Americans added to what Africans already had to deal with, but it does show that their experience was neither unique, nor externally caused.

This is all a matter of record, even if it runs contrary to the accepted image of Africans as pitiful victims of European oppressors. Africans no longer live miserable lives under European or American masters. They're now back to living miserable lives under their own kind. So I refuse to buy into this lefty article of faith that you and Momus so clearly cherish. To use Momus' metaphor: Babylon was already built in Africa, by Africans, long before the Babylonian empire even existed. And it Babylon will continue to be an African construction until/unless they change their own society. Until then, they'll keep up the slave-taking, the raping, the murder and superstition and oppression that makes distinguishes them from all other societies today.