4. Jacob Miller – Too Much Commercialization of Rastafari
It’s s hard not to say anything about Jacob Miller, you have to say everything about him. Jacob Miller is one of the most recognized personalities of that era from the ’70s going into the ’80s outside of Bob Marley and Dennis Brown, so just to know that he was a bredrin of my dad… the kind of music they created together is always a joy to hear.
He was a direct kind of person and that’s important because, as the title suggests, there’s definitely Too Much Commercialization of Rastafari. A lack of management and certain things on our part has allowed a lot of people to take advantage of what we created. At that point, it was still new but people were hearing about it and coming to Jamaica as early as the 1950s [to find out about it]. Columbia University had written to the Rastas. Maybe the public hadn’t heard too much about it but intellectual people and society had realized that something was coming up out of Jamaica, that was Rastafari. I think at that point they realized Rastafari was something to be capitalized upon because it’s just like any other culture, music or resources that somebody can take from you and find a way to market when you’re not able to do the same for yourself.