Rastafari groundation

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Meaning of rasta

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I only recently came across some writings by Mortimo ‘Kumie’ Planno, a Rastafari teacher. As a Rasta it made me smile to read and so I’m sharing this bit of history that like some much of our history seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Mortimo-PlannoDownload

Mortimo St George “Kumi” Planno, (6 September 1929, Cuba – 5 March 2006, Kingston, Jamaica) A Rastafari elder, drummer and a follower of the back-to-Africa movement founded in the 1910s by Marcus Garvey.

A prominent Rastafari teacher in Jamaica in the 1950s, he helped found the Rastafari Movement Association as well as the Local Charter 37 of the Ethiopian World Federation. He also instigated the first “Universal Grounation of the Rastafari”, a drumming and chanting ceremony held in Back-O-Wall in March 1958.

Mortimo was part of the Jamaican government’s delegation of officials and Rastafari leaders sent to Addis Ababa in 1961 to meet Emperor Haile Selassie. Planno, Douglas Aiken Mack, and F

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CREATION to ESCHATON

In two previous blog posts I reported on the theology conference held at the Jamaica Theological Seminary in Kingston (where I did my formative theological studies many years ago) and the trip some of us took afterwards to two Rastafarian heritage sites.

One of our presenters at the theology conference, who was also on the trip, was a Canadian named Christopher Duncanson-Hales. As a Roman Catholic theologian, Duncanson-Hales may have seemed a bit out of place among a largely Protestant group; but he was very familiar with Jamaican culture, and especially with Rastafari.

From his initial visit to Jamaica as a teenager, when he arrived to work with Father Ho Lung’s ministry in Kingston (called the Missionaries of the Poor), he met up with Rastas and intentionally tried to understand their culture and doctrines.

Later, through an extended stay in Jamaica he was apprenticed to the respected Rastafarian elder Sydney DaSilva (president of the Rastafarian Centralization Organization). His many meetings with Ras DaSilva resulted in research notes that be

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Rasta pioneer Mortimo Planno dies at 85

KINGSTON (AP) ? Mortimo Planno, a philosopher regarded as a key figure in the development of the Rastafarian religion, has died. He was 85.

Planno died Monday at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, after suffering complications from a thyroid condition, said Barry Chevannes, a longtime friend and anthropology professor at the university.

?Planno was an icon in the Rasta movement,? said Chevannes, a specialist on the movement.

Though rejected by mainstream Jamaican society, the movement grew into a structured religion, in large part under Planno?s influence.

.Planno was one of the most influential people in the development of Rastafarianism and taught its principles in his home in the Kingston ghetto of Trench Town to students that included the late singer Bob Marley. Planno held a fellowship in folk philosophy at UWI. He is survived by a brother and two nieces.

Mr. Planno will be remembered by many for the role he played during the visit of Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie I, to Jamaica in 1966.

He was report