Partridge/Dub in Babylon, 1. Roots and Culture

This chapter is concerned with explaining the context in which dub reggae evolved and expose some central historical, political and religious features of this context. Whether we think of the self-removal of the Maroons from the world of the plantation, or the culture of West African indentured labourers, or the millenarian themes of Afro-Christianity, or the Ethiopianism of Back-to-Africa politics, or the deification of Haile Selassie I, or the sacralized use of ‘weed’, or the I ‘n’ I mystical identity of the self and the divine, they have all significantly contributed to the religio-political discourse of reggae and dub. Indeed, were it not for this history and culture, roots reggae and dub would never have appeared in the forms that they eventually did.