Nettleford and Rastafari's Inner Landscape j AH LAN I N lAAH Introduction: Removing the plantation, redeeming the landscape The infiuence of the movement has been very, very far-reaching and deeply pene- trating . . . which you [Rastafari] must take every credit for because you really have been forcing people in Jamaica to accept the fact that they are black. I have never seen a blacker country which is afraid of blackness. One of the marvellous things about the Rastafarian is, people like us ate not racist. We are not that unsophistica- ted to be racist — only buttos are racist. But we are not that silly not to be race- conscious. And that's a delicate balance of sensibility which I first found among the Rastafarians . . .' Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Bunny Wailer, Sizzla, David Rudder: these are just a few names which come to mind when we think of our articulate black resistance tradition today. This of course would be to confine our scrutiny to the realm of popular/verbal oratory, without appropriately regarding the facil- ity these artists have been afforded by the pioneering work of one of Jamaica's gigantic cultural magicians. Rex Nettleford. It was Nettleford who, since his rise to national prominence in the late 1950s, was to be at the vanguard, re-presenting and securing a place for culture as the purview of the intellectual. From that space Nettleford was to advise the national and international direc- torates about the embodiment and integrity of the African Jamaican cultural heritage. To paraphrase Hilary Beckles, Nettleford became the chief consultant on obeah, or perhaps even the chief obeahman in this region.^ 49