It is a good and necessary question for human beings, consisting in essence of an elaboration of our own innate survival sense (“spirit”, “soul”).
It goes beyond the body, and that is where it gets tricky, and connected with all manmade corruptions and wickedness. Violence, rape and molestation, enslavement, confinement, are all sensed bodily, yet reflect overall power differences, the lack of an “own input” or “say” in it, so to speak, to whatever is done to our body. Therefore to us.
Crucially, in human rights discourses, the “freedom of movement” is often seen as part of this “bodily integrity”, not as a distinct, separate “right”. This makes perfect sense, yet in practice is still separated by higher authorities, with manmade boundaries, and border control. Recently with imposed curfews, supposedly in relation to a pandemic (some say plandemic). Bodily integrity, as long as you don’t move or travel too much or freely..
This corruption and confusion is so strong and even taken for granted to some degree.
As Bob Marley – as so often – put it simply yet eloquently in his lyrics for the song Rebel Music: “Why can’t we roam this open country? Why can’t we be what we want to be? We want to be free..” .
GYPSY IDEAL
There exists something of a “gypsy ideal”. The feel of total disconnect with responsibilities, living by the day, no steady place, while travelling free. As modern societies became sedentary, the echoes of the “nomadic” human forebears, were both feared and missed.
That gipsy romanticism is found in parts of Europe with relatively many actual “Gypsies”, now more known as Roma or Romani. Roma people – most probably originally from North Western India (Rajasthan) – got known as “calé” (from their own language) in Spain. In Western Europe, Spain is the country with historically relatively most Roma (Gypsies) inhabitants, while in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania have relatively most Roma “gypsies” , and quite some also in some other countries in the Balkan region.
Music and songs made by Gypsies in Spain, and in Eastern Europe, often convey that “nomad” or “gypsy” spirit of freedom and roaming, against confinements and obstacles from the sedentary surroundings (discrimination, limitations, persecutions, etc.).
The genres are different, as many Gypsies are active in South Spanish Flamenco music, which is exactly that: South Spanish music in origin, with different historical influences in that region (inc. Moorish ones, local ones, a.o.), but with later added Gypsy/Roma influences.
Flamenco is thus not “Romani/Gypsy music” as some think, as such, but South Spanish music, later indeed influenced by Romani.. Many Flamenco artists are however Roma/Gypsies, so through this best-known Spanish music genre, Roma/Spanish gypsies certainly contributed to Spanish culture internationally, even its image.
The Romani people of Bulgaria, Rumania, and the Balkan also were influential musically. They mostly, likewise, picked up mixed international influences from other cultures – with their travelling – adding their own style, such as what is known as Tallava in the Balkan countries (Bosnia, Albania a.o.). Due to their nomadic living, the Romani could not preserve fully original instrumental genres of themselves, only some vocal songs, and more general recurring characteristics they add from their culture to other genres found along the way, in music (e.g. hand-clapping) and dancing.. This is noticeable also in Flamenco.
In Europe and the entire Western world, most Romani now also settled/became sedentary, and the “nomadic” lifestyle became essentially outlawed, and strongly discouraged.
Maybe there is some symbolism in the fact that one of the few persons of Romani descent that obtained a high political position was Juscelino Kubischek, the founder of Brazil’s new inland capital Brasilia (his mother was of Czech and Romani descent).
The “freedom of movement” is therefore in itself framed and limited even on a local level, while crossing a national border can in none of these controlled societies be really done unnoticed, only relatively.
Looking at “bodily integrity” as such, there is much more of this systemic corruption slipping in these modern societies. Partly this is connected to medical care, but also to uniform school systems, required presence and obedience.
Also, for adults: going through life without working yet still eating every day, and having a place to rest one’s head, is impossible, unless depending on someone else. Humans are thus forced to participate in this (money-based) system, which of course in itself conjures questions of “bodily integrity”.
In the strictest sense: the right for your body not to be touched, chained, violated, or penetrated by others, without permission, seems in the recent century a bit more accepted by authorities. When you think about it, though, not fully. In judicial and police spheres there are legal exceptions, and in the medical field, with so-called emergencies.
This last aspect I would like to discuss in the remainder of this post, along the way reflecting on the current times.
COVID 19
There is a lyric by another great Reggae artist, Gregory Isaacs, about his time in prison (for gun possession, they say, some say cocaine), a song called Out Deh: “I was tired of the jailhouse, but the jailhouse wasn’t tired of me”..
That is how I feel right now about this lasting, frankly dystopic, “corona/covid 19 crisis”. I came – after careful studying - to the conclusion that it is a hyped-up virus, and that this is about elite economics and control, and not about health. I wrote some songs about it myself, heard insightful and convincing explanations and counterarguments by many intelligent people and true scholars. I also wrote about it before on this blog.
I guess that after this, my saturation point is reached – let’s face it: viruses had sometimes my interest but never was my passion..why would it? I find that theme not that interesting, as a person. I know by now well what there is to know – and what is wrong – about the plandemic. I prefer to look to better alternatives: reviving and retrieving the freedom and culture we lost. To show with my life how freedom and culture are the essence of being human. Despite even opposition, giving the example. After screaming what’s wrong, comes showing what’s right.
I maintain my same stance, however: this “corona crisis” (I prefer to call it “lockdown policy” or “pLandemic”) is about control, not about health. This brings us back to “bodily integrity”.
The quite sudden “urge” to control of authorities was somehow – successfully - camouflaged by the pandemic threat and disease “emergency” thrown into the world. Internationally coordinated policies against this supposed virus threat, included some new policy measures, including “lockdowns”, quite unknown in democratic societies, yet presented as necessary.
They were neither necessary nor effective (against viruses) those “lockdowns”, yet the basic human rights “bodily integrity” and “ freedom of movement” were corrupted again. The Covid 19 virus is not severe enough: now at an Infection Fatality Rate even under the 0,20%, with moreover specific vulnerable groups.. but like I said: this is not about health.
Curfews were unknown in the Netherlands, where I live, since the German Nazi occupation (1940-45), and the curfew imposition reminded citizens in other countries of former dictatorships (of Franco, Mussolini, Ceaucescu, Honecker a.o.) too.
Being punishable when walking out your own front door. Huh, how did that become illegal? Only propaganda and fear-mongering could make this acceptable without mass rebellion (safe in a few countries where authorities dared not to impose mass curfews). Of course a far cry from the “free, nomadic spirit” still somewhere in us humans.
More unacceptable restrictions became acceptable with these ever-expanding or prolonged corona policies, absurdly supported by most people. “Supported” is perhaps often a big word: some people “support” such limitations (having some interested goals, or for ideological reasons), while some “accept” it, like many accept taxation, paying the rent, or having to work: a necessary, inevitable evil. What can you do about it?
It is here where a danger lies. Governments deciding if private businesses can open and at what hours is absurd, but became only accepted because of a fabricated “emergency”, which is actually a hype, as it is a health problem that could be solved, well, medically, without lockdowns, as countless actual medical experts and professors have already said (often more or less censored).
Testing and vaccine requirements (even obligations!) touch most directly “bodily integrity”. Nonsensical (you can only infect others when really sick, vaccine/gene therapy not fully tested, potential side-effects, little effective and – just as important – not urgent or necessary). Nonsensical, and therefore even more violating “bodily integrity” rights.
This bodily integrity is important to keep in mind, as boundaries that are pushed by this plandemic should be pushed back. When you are not sick with symptoms, you should be able to go where and when you want, how you want, uncontrolled: no test or vaccine proof (private matter anyway), no required face-mask, no forced distance when interacting. You know why? Because you are not ill with symptoms, you cannot infect others more than usually. You are no danger or disturbance. You’re just a human being living naturally, further like always of course keeping in mind things like legality, and not bothering/respecting others, etcetera.
We are far from that now in many countries worldwide, during this absurd, totalitarian plandemic.
As could be expected, this extra corona legislation in many countries, provide more excuses for discrimination of specific groups, hitherto “difficult to control”. The mentioned Romani or Gypsies were before (and partly still) one of those “difficult-to-control” groups/minorities. This is – in my opinion – probably one of the goals of the plandemic – controlling the relatively less-controllable, but others may have another analysis or opinion about this.
Culture and free gathering are limited and affected most strongly, and connected “night life”. Curfews in “festive” countries with rich musical cultures like Jamaica, Cuba, or Brazil were very impactful and, well, destructive, and demoralizing. Luckily not fully. Again, accepted because many people do not know the virus is not so severe (comparable to the flu, now). Propaganda worked well. Instilling fear works.
So there it is: people are conditioned, even many in “defiant” countries (with rebellious histories), to (self-)control, with an added “annoying cop” in their heads, judging their own formerly natural behavior, like freely moving about, gathering/socializing, distance when interacting with others.. moving and doing, thus “bodily integrity”. For no good reason: there is no extraordinary emergency in a medical sense.
Just as bad that authorities and big business want this control (for money and power), is the popular acceptance. Not universally, but broadly. Apparently people who get by financially, and do not consider “doing outdoor cultural things” that important for their happiness. They have after all loved ones at home, a tv, and an internet connection, but also people simply “feared and terrorized” accepted it, and “stayed home”.
TRIMMED FOCIBLY
I see a parallel with a recent case in Jamaica, certainly concerning “bodily integrity”. That of a 19-years old Jamaican woman, Nzinga King, recently “trimmed” – i.e. her natural dreadlocks were cut off forcibly in a police station after arrest (for, they say, “disorderly conduct”). There is no good reason for this. It has no justification, rationally or morally.
Yet it was common practice in Jamaican history, in the first decades after the Rastafari movement arose, during the 1930s, following the coronation of Haile Selassie in 1930. Even up to the 1970s. Reggae singer Max Romeo explained that even into the 1970s, Rastafari people with dreadlocks had to “hide” to several degrees in Jamaican society.. At first beards were grown among early Rastas – and some copied Haile Selassie’s Afro-like hairdo - , later (in the course of the 1940s and 1950s) “dreadlocks” became more common, some say in imitation of Kenyan Mau Mau warriors against British colonizers.
Jamaican conservative authorities feared the Rastafari movement for their anticolonial, anti-authority stances. They had own, free communities - and outlawed income sources - the state had difficulty controlling.
HYPED UP
There is the parallel: the danger of Rastafari in Jamaica was: “hyped up”, exaggerated through propaganda, as it disturbed the social order. Like now, a mass hysteria or psychosis of sorts was stimulated around this among common folk too. This narrative was accepted by a part of the conservative Jamaicans (mostly Protestant Christians), more accepting of authority and the (neo-) colonial order.. Some out of conviction, some out of necessity: again: a necessary, inevitable evil for functioning in society..
There was never a real, extraordinary danger from Rastafari people in Jamaica: they were no criminal organization targeting other people. Their outlawed activity was marijuana cultivation: after all a plant being called (unjustly) a “drug”..
Still there was perceived or fabricated “danger”, legitimizing harsh treatment of state forces, against Rastafari groups, often - as elsewhere often too - with some invented pretext or excuse (supposed crime,even rape or murder). This in turn triggered police’s unlawful arrest, physical violence against Rastas, and, yes, the trimming of the dreadlocks, cutting this hair by force.
I consider natural hair as intrinsically part of the body, so that is part of the physical violence against persons, and thus the violating of “bodily integrity”. Likewise, being discriminated for your looks, goes against “freedom of choice”, but also“freedom of movement”: sure, you can walk and move about, just expect to be bothered and insulted. It still tramples that right.
Rastafari gained more and more acceptance in Jamaica over time, especially since Bob Marley’s rise to fame, and the connection of many Rastafari to successfully internationalized Reggae music, as known Jamaican export. Further insights and “civilizing” developments toward human and cultural rights recognition, also made that “forcibly trimming dreadlocks” by now seemed mostly over, and a thing of a grim Jamaican past, up to at most the 1970s.
That explains the just outrage among the Rastafari community in Jamaica (and internationally), as the dreadlocked hair has a “religious” or “spiritual” significance. Even without that “religious” meaning, cutting off someone’s hair (if e.g. too long) for a minor arrest is of course absurd and immoral by itself, but with Rastas extra disrespectful toward their cultural and religious rights.
Some of the fiercer critics of the corona/covid 19 “lockdowns” and measures in countries, call these measures a “war against individual autonomy”, and, relatedly, a “war against culture” (also a name of a song by me), or even “joy” as such. It seems like it, anyway..
The trimming of Rasta’s dreadlocks has unfortunately a longer history –as explained – in Jamaica (and elsewhere in the Caribbean, in Africa, and Latin America), from way before this corona crisis. Also the documentary Bad Friday : Rastafari After Coral Gardens (2011), relating events of violence against Rastas and dreadlocks trimming in 1963, documents this.
The essence is remarkably similar, though: a hyped-up emergency to legitimize violation/abuse of human rights, of bodily integrity, and with the underlying goal to “control” dissident, difficult-to-control groups in society - like once in some countries the Romani/Gypsies, or the Jews for that matter - , not fitting well in the elite’s wider economic plan. Especially a “culturally” (i.e. Afrocentric) dissident group like the Rastafari – in a pro-European, (neo)colonial context - was seen as a nuisance or danger for authorities and their societal control.
CLEVER PLAN
Using “health” and an “infectious disease”, as powers that be/authorities/”Babylon” does now, proved a clever plan for this control goal, perhaps more clever and effective than “public order” or (supposed) “criminality” as was used before to oppress people. Poor people did not like disorder, and even less crime, but could understand, grasp it, as very human and contextual. A virtually unknown, infectious and dangerous/”deadly” virus is another story.
Against this new clever plan of “Babylon”, as the Rastas call the “powers that be” or authorities (including the wealthiest 2% in this world, Bilderberg group, WEF, etcetera), Rastafari should hold firm to its principles of “cultural autonomy”, human and bodily integrity, and “(individual) freedom” against the prevailing, repressive, “streamlining” system. It did so since its start in the 1930s, and inspired even several resistance movements worldwide, alongside other Black Power and Human Rights organization.
On a personal note, as I listened and liked a lot of Roots Reggae lyrics since my teens in the 1980s, and even got into the Rastafari Livity definitely and more fully in 2010 (before that I sympathized), this Rastafari wisdom of rebellion against a powerful system, autonomy, freedom from mental slavery, cultural self-respect, and essential human freedom, helped me to “prepare” for even this totalitarian covid 19 nonsense, Babylon now came with.
“Just the same old Babylon, trying to run things to a wreck”, as summarized well in Richie Spice’s song Righteous Youths, but many Reggae lyrics more or less predicted this totalitarian “Babylon control”, against popular (poor people’s) freedoms and rights. It is in the historical line since conquest, colonialism, enslavement, capitalist exploitation, cultural repression, poor people’s oppression, so common in many countries in the world, mostly started or stimulated by Western powers, and a wealthy few.
That is one way to push those boundaries of violating bodily integrity and freedom back: the Rastafari sense of cultural and human autonomy. Even if it is against all odds, as it is necessary. We should not make acceptable what is not..
That 19 year old Jamaican young woman, Nzinga, whose dreadlocks got trimmed by a police officer, was arrested for disorderly conduct, a minor offence if any, but the initial reason (or excuse) of her arrest was in reality one of those Covid 19 rules: she did not wear a mask (on her own face, without symptoms, masks that besides do not protect well, etc.). It all interrelates..
Apart from this regrettable incident, I fear that – and in fact notice it already – that Rastafari culture will be repressed with “covid measures” as welcome pretexts/excuses” for this. In Jamaica and elsewhere. Apart from just the dreadlocks as symbol, the attack and war on the people and their culture, by outlawing cultural gatherings, concerts - “live” culture let’s say - along with increased censorship in the online context people are relegated to.. All this seems all too welcome for people who do not want Rastafari’s message to be spread too openly and freely among people, as it goes against their interests and power base.
