This is one of those actually “logical” or “commonsensical” things of human history, that many not even realized.
ANTHROPOLOGY
I stumbled on that fact – that language use precedes culture – when I some time ago wrote an online review of the work ‘Anthropology for Dummies’ (2009), in that .. “for Dummies” series, for a Dutch website maintained by cultural anthropology students in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Don’t ask me how and why, but the review of the book was a nice task, as I found the book very insightful about human cultural history. Things that seemed logical, when just clearing your mind. For example: that through language metaphor choices differences in culture originate.
Another one is how the need to “store” agriculture produce, in warehouses, led to more sedentary settlements and societies. “Duh”, one might say.. yet many did not thought about it clearly. The same with the link between language use starting, or “articulating” cultural development.
To illustrate this, one word I wish to focus on in this blog post, is the word Kush, or the related term Cushite. In areas I am interested in, language, music, history, and geography, I kept encountering the terms Kush or Cushite. Whether written with a C or K.
The interesting thing is that the similar terms I noticed being used with seemingly different meanings.
WEED
Amsterdam, where I live, still has a name as a “free” marijuana-smoking, “coffeeshop” centre. Living for over 20 years in Amsterdam now, and not far from the city before that, I must also point out something. This “coffeeshop” image, seemed cool abroad, and even a source of pride for some Amsterdammers. The truth of the matter is, however, that the last decades the coffeeshops – such as the number of them – have been constantly under attack -, as were the every opening hours. After all, marijuana was only “decriminalized” in Dutch law, not “legalized”, which is a misconception. Governmental authorities thus still can limit and proscribe.
An “anti weed-tourism”, and – equally odd and intolerant – general “anti-tourism” current among Central Amsterdam residents, ultimately led to swindling numbers of coffee-shops, from around 1993 over 400 in Amsterdam, to now (2023) around 160. The opening hours of weed-selling coffeeshops were limited by law over time from 03:00 (and even 04:00 in some places), to 01:00. Recently added legislation decreed further that no new coffeeshops can be opened.
Smoking marijuana on the streets of the oldest part of the Centre in Amsterdam (Nieuwmarkt/”Red Light” area), has this year (since May 2023) even been forbidden and finable.
Despite this clear, “bullying” anti-coffeeshop/free-weed smoking policy, Amsterdam still – now in 2023 - has maintained quite some free-marijuana buy or smoke “coffeeshops”; just enough to maintain that image, however more and more limited and tainted.
I relate all this, because in several of these coffeeshops, they also sell “Kush”-type weeds. It is a common term in the marijuana-growers and –smokers world. After research I found out it refers to a mountain range in Pakistan/Afghanistan, known as Hindu Kush: a region with a long marijuana-growing history, especially of the potent “Indica” strain named, thus, Kush (original etymology is from a local language). Potent Indica means good to relax or sleep, rather than to party (for which uplifting “Sativa” strain weed is more suitable).
Weed experts (they are quite abundant) point at the common mistaken use of the term “Kush” nowadays, among “potheads”, often just meaning – or supposed to mean - “high grade” (high quality) when put behind a name of some weed/marijuana. Often there is not even a genetic relation with the Pakistan/Afghanistan Hindus Kush mountains anymore. It seems thus just a “weed marketing” term.
The term apparently got – derived from this - a life of its own internationally, as “Kush” is also a term used for an illegal drug (deemed “dangerous") in Sierra Leone.
AFRICA
When I encountered this term: on coffeeshop menus in Amsterdam or when smokers mentioned it – whether really genetically from that Hindu Kush region or not - , I however thought of something entirely else, showing my personal interest in history and languages. I thought of the language branch, I read about: “the Cushitic/Cushite languages”, spoken in quite another part of the world: Eastern (the “Horn of”) Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia and surroundings.
I also heard of the historical, ancient Kingdom of Kush, in Nubia in Africa (around Sudan), in the Nile-valley, with connections to famous Ancient Egypt, north of it, spreading South as far as central Sudan. Nubian dynasties provided Egypt with several “Black African” pharaos and kings or influences, contradicting the later “whitening” of Ancient Egypt, in Western (but also Arab) sources. The Nubian Kingdom of Kush arose from around 1100 BC, and had its peak around – historians say – around 770 BC, even dominating Egypt. Since then Egypt had Nubian/Kush pharaos.
Important cities of Nubia/the kingdom of Kush included Napata, in present-day Sudan. The fact that there are more pyramids as such in present-day Sudan than in Egypt, are an historic testament to this glorious period.
My own instrumental as a musician – named Napata - refers to that, also visually in its video photos (pyramids in present-day Sudan).
The word “Kush” for this kingdom, south of Egypt, is probably of local origin.
CUSHITIC LANGUAGES
I always assumed a link with the kingdom of Kush the mentioned Cushitic languages (and ethnic groups speaking them), in the Horn of Africa, but confusingly enough this is only limitedly there. Turns out that “Cush” is also a name in the Bible, of one of the sons of Ham (Cham). Ham gave the name Hamites to Northern Africans (Berber people), and Western linguists apparently wanted to name the newly categorized Afro-Asiatic language branch, distantly related to Hamitic languages, in Eastern Africa, after this Biblical character, Cush.
Of course there is a distance between Sudan and Oromia and Somalia – just like there is between Denmark and Spain, for instance – but still: a connection to Nubia seemed not far-fetched for me, also because Sudan borders Ethiopia, where the Oromo speak their Cushitic language. One of the larger ones –in fact – with over 25 million speakers, followed by quite some Somali speakers.
Cushitic languages are moreover also known in parts of what is now NE Sudan (even Egypt), and nearby western Eritrea. Not too far East of where once Napata/Kush was. The Beja people there speak a Cushitic language (the northern-most of the branch).
Both the Somali as the Oromo put somehow into question the “Asiatic” in the Afro-Asiatic language family. Though a very, very distant relationship is assumed by linguists with Semitic languages, and also a very distant one between Berber and Cushitic languages, genetic and archeological studies point at local African origins of both the Oromo people (in Southern Ethiopia and bordering Kenya), and of Somali people and language in Somalia itself. Very superficially a relatively darker skin, and more sub-Saharan African features – when compared to e.g. Arabs – already point at this.
Whereas the “Dutch coffeeshop”, marijuana-smokers term “Kush” refers in fact to South Asia and the Pakistan region, other meanings of Kush or Cushite thus refer to Africa.
This – like the term Nubian – has obtained a symbolical function among parts of the African diaspora in the West (Americas) as an identity reaffirmation and connection with ancestral Africa, where they were stolen from.
Nubia(ns) historically indeed had a High Civilization when compared to Europe at the time, and were mostly Black Africans: this was highly developed, and not just a myth invented by a Black power hobbyist, as some unjustly ridicule it.
REGGAE
In the Black Power-influenced Rastafari movement, and consequently in many Reggae lyrics, “Cushite” is used too, just as “Nubian”, to refer to an African heritage, similarly as in some “conscious” hip-hop among African-Americans in the US, and since the days of Malcolm X.
The Jamaican Reggae artist Winston McAnuff called his band (to perform and record with) the Black Kush band. A more recent, younger Reggae and Dancehall artist, also Rastafari-inspired, also goes by the name of Black Kush.
There was a Roots Reggae band called the Cushites as well (already by the 1970s).
More recently, also a lady singer (from Trinidad and Tobago) calls herself Kushite. With fine songs and good singing, she seems talented enough. From US Virgin Islands hails the artist calling himself Abja De Kushite.
Another Rastafari-inspired musical Reggae group from Jamaica (with older members) active now calls itself KushArt.
Among these conscious Rastafari-adhering Reggae artists, and also when used in lyrics – such as in I Wayne’s lyrics “The Kushites keep prevailing” (on the fine song Trample The Beast), a link with Africa seems more probable, than a quite shallow reference to the “kush” type of weed/marijuana. This use is not absent, even in Jamaica.. but only in cases when the lyrics are about marijuana.
Cushite or Kush is, again confusingly, therefore also used in reference to Marijuana (the Indica strain) in some Reggae lyrics, even by Rastafari-adhering artists often referring to Africa too. Yet another somehow confusing aspects of the use of the term “Cush”.
This confusion is played with, you can say. Hempress Sativa’s mellow song Kushite Love might refer to marijuana involvement (see also the weed-based wordplay of her artist name) in the love making, but also to fine love making between two black/African-descended people: she and a Black man. “African love”, so to speak.
“It’s all good”, in my opinion, as Black Americans say.
I imagined for a while that it might be marijuana from that part of Africa (just like you have weed from Congo or South Africa), and hash is smoked a lot in the Sudan-region - but it turns out I was mistaken (Hindu Kush mountains, Pakistan/Afghanistan), as I learned.
Well: in one’s own head one is free to still make and fantasize about that connection, haha.
SELASSIE
There are, besides this, also Reggae lyrics referring to Kush or Cushite as in Africa. Quite reasonably, as Ethiopia, of which Emperor Haile Selassie (venerated/worshipped among Rastafari) was Emperor, has a large “Cushitic-language” speaking ethnic group, the Oromo, of which – moreover – Haile Selassie himself partly descended.
Though often associated with the Amhara ethnicity (of which Selassie for another part also descended), the Emperor had through both his parents in fact a mixed-Ethiopian ethnic background (Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, a.o.). So, he was in fact also “Cushitic”, ethnically, one might say, though identified as Amhara (and as a Christian).
In Ethiopia itself, the (mostly Orthodox Christian) Amhara ethnic group – speaking a Semitic-derived language - , are known as a relatively “lighter-skinned”, Arabian Peninsula-descended group, yet: they mixed with local Africans.
This – and the other (African) ethnic origins of Haile Selassie – makes Selassie being a deity/figurehead for the Afro-centric Rastafari movement at least sensible, certainly in a symbolic sense.
HISTORY OF AFRICA
Therefore, despite the worn-out cliché of Rasta Reggae artists smoking marijuana (incl. Kush for Indica-likers), the term Cushite has a significant, quite interesting meaning in the originally Jamaican Rastafari movement. Multiple, yet valuable. Perhaps by extension – also in light of the ancient Nubian kingdom Kush – also for the entire African Diaspora and Africa itself.
It helps at least to shed light on the fact that Africa had a varied and developed history before slavery put it on the self-interested European colonizers’ map. It had advanced civilizations – including science - at the time when Greek and Rome still lived as the primitive “Barbarians” they later criticized.
An advanced civilization is not always good or more humane for all – after all often requiring exploitation and slavery – than a human life more balanced with nature, but it shows the variety and versatility of Africa’s rich history, including of sub-Saharan “Black” Africans, when part of the Europeans still lived in caves or huts, and not yet cities.
Again: “cities” - the big city - is not by definition a good thing, and often a prerequisite for conquest and exploitation. The first city with 100.000 inhabitants was ancient Babylon (enslaving many people), in present-day Iraq, and the first one with a million inhabitants Rome, in present-day Italy, known for military conquests and unequal societies with slavery.
The Nubian Kingdom of Kush, and before that Egypt, bordering in the North to it, were similar “conquering”, powerful (and unequal) civilizations, with slavery. Kush was particularly known for its gold, enabling its power.
MORE?
Other meanings of Kush I do not know of, though Indica-strain ”Kush” weeds indeed stimulate sleeping/relaxing (downers), reason for which I find the similarity to the French word “couch(er)” (to lay down, go to bed/sleep) a funny coincidence. Pure coincidence, as Latin-derived. In Spanish (another Latin-derived language) it would be “acostar(se)”, so quite different, but from the same Latin root..
All these multiple meaning are thus at the same times confusing, as they are interesting and creative.
All this illustrates what was explained in the ‘Antropology for Dummies’ book I reviewed once: the possibility of language (methapors) for cultural creation.
