ACROSS THE POND

Black Cowboys and Rastas

Netflix Western ‘The Harder They Fall’ honors Rasta version of Redwood

The Netflix blockbuster, The Harder They Fall, had me squealing! That’s because it hit me different than most people watching it. It spoke to my Black Power self, my Black feminist self, my lover of global Black music self but also my Pan African- and Rasta- minded self.

The film paid homage to the legacy of Black cowboys and was written, directed, and scored by Jeymes Samuel. He is a Black British singer and songwriter, producer, and filmmaker who I presume is also Rasta-minded.

This is because in the film's musical subtext he pays homage to the first Diasporic Black people to repatriate themselves successfully and independently to Africa.

While the film is a fictional story of an outlaw committed to getting revenge on the man who killed his parents, the characters they played were not. It features a bevy of African American stars including Regina King, Jonathan Majors, LeKeith Stanfield and Black British stars like Idris Elba and Delroy Lindo (who is also American). This casting, plus the writing, offers a more accurate rendition of the classic old western.

Samuel makes particular reference to the Rastafarians who migrated to Shashemene in Southern Ethiopia in 1963. He does this by featuring Dennis Brown’s 1977 song “Promise Land.”

This repatriation movement was spearheaded by the 12 Tribes of Israel, which is one of the Mansions of Rastafari. It was founded in Kingston, Jamaica under the leadership of Vernon Carrington, also known as the Prophet Gad. This Rasta-created, global repatriation movement fundraised from London to Toronto and across the Caribbean for willing participants to physically build the settlement and for the millions of dollars needed to fund it.

The singer, Brown, was a Rastafarian and an active member of the 12 Tribes of Israel. He used his roots rock reggae music as a marketing tool to spread Rasta philosophy which included repatriation to the “Promise Land” — the Shashemene settlement. This in turn accelerated the group’s fundraising efforts.