Ras Michael of Sons of Negus fame now a ‘Rasta Christian’

“I am a Rastaman Christian!” So says 79-year-old nyahbinghi singer Ras Michael in a recent interview with The Gleaner.

Michael’s spiritual belief has come full circle, having grown up with his Christian mother, converted to Rastafari in the ‘50s. and now is professing to be a Rasta christian.

The St Mary-born Ras Michael garnered fame in the 1970s for Rasta-conscious, firebrand songs like New Name and None A Jah Jah Children, which showcased traditional drumming and Rastafarian spiritual chants. His group, Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus, helped to popularise Nyabinghi music by blending it with the pulsating, one-drop beat of reggae. He also garnered visibility for his seminal album, Rastafari, which featured a painting of a young Haile Selassie, done by graphic artist Neville Garrick on the cover.

“So because I am a Rastaman, that mek me not a Christian?” Michael asked, when pressed about his spiritual transformation.

Ras Michael, who was born Michael George Henry in 1944, moved with his mother and siblings to Rose Lane in Kingston, where, as an impressionable teenager, he met Mortimo Planno, a renowned Rastafari elder, drummer and a follower of the Back-to-Africa Movement of Marcus Garvey. Planno, who is credited with establishing the Rastafari Movement Association, had a major influence on Ras Michael, who joined the Rastafari Movement in the 1950s.

The California-based singer was living in Jamaica in 1966 and firmly entrenched in the Rastafarian religion when Emperor Haile Selassie I visited the island.

“I saw him [Selassie] at Vale Royal in Kingston,” he recalled. “I saw how the people of Jamaica loved him and honoured him. We wanted to give him what he was due.”

Ironically, it was during this visit that Michael started to question whether Selassie was indeed God.

LINEAGE OF KING DAVID

“There was something inna my heavens that tell me sey God is a spirit,” he reiterated. “His Majesty did not tell none of us he is God. His Majesty came from the lineage of King David. King David never tell no one seh him a God. None of the kings before said they were God, either.”

He shared that in the early 1970s, Abuna Yesehaq was sent to Jamaica from Ethiopia to minister and educate the Rastafarian community.

“Some of the Rastas wanted to be baptised in the name of Rastafari, but Abuna said, ‘No, no no. You must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. As it is written, that is the only name.’ And he was very stern about that,” Michael stated.

After years of living as a Rastaman, Ras Michael is now an evangelist, an ambassador and a diplomat for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahido Church internationally. This is more than five decades after he created history in 1967 as the first member of the Rastafarian movement to host a radio programme, The Lion of Judah Time, on the then JBC radio in Jamaica. Like Christians around the world, he now believes in the incarnation of God the Son, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He clings to the words of Selassie, who once said, “Do not worship me, I am not God. I’m only a man.”

“A God inna Rasta! A God inna His Majesty!” he exclaimed to make the point of his new-found Christian belief.

Earlier this year, he started an Instagram Live programme to spread his teachings of Rasta Christianity to a growing legion of followers who tune in weekly.

In 2015 Ras Michael was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaican Government in recognition of his contribution to the development of the country’s music, and in 2019, he was honoured with citations from the California House of Representatives and the Senate.

Ras Michael recently released an album titled Jah Love, which features American multi-instrumentalist Steve Verhault.

entertainment@gleanerjm.com