Ganja
Is
there a “home-grown relationship between marijuana and reggae culture”18?
No matter if you listen to “Legalize Marijuana” by Peter Tosh, “Marijuana
in my brain” by Dillinger, “Ganja Bonanza” by Michael Rose,
“Legalization” by Culture or “Come along” by The Black Arks, it is
always about the same: the glorification of Marijuana and the call to legalize
its use.
In the language of Reggae, there are a lot of words for marijuana and for the
“instruments” that are used to smoke it: “chalice” = pipe ("Pick up
the chalice and make it clean up your heart”19), “chillum” (= “chalice”)
and “spliff” = a joint of about 10cm (“ Excuse me while I light my sliff...”20)
for the instruments and ganja, kaja, sensemilla, herb or (wisdom) weed for the
marijuana.
“Wisdom weed” refers to the hoped-for effect of this plant that in the
belief of the Rastafarians helps to get closer to Jah and to understand (Reggae-language:
overstan’) spiritual things better. Therefore, smoking marijuana is a fixed
part of the meetings of Rastafarians, Nyabinghis, where they discuss and make
music. The relationship between Nyabinghis and marijuana is shown in a song of
Bob Marley: “Jump, jump,
jump Nyabinghi. –We’ve got the herb, we’ve got the herb”21. On the one
hand, this means that a Nyabinghi without marijuana is unintelligible, on the
other hand, the act of smoking gets a solemn character.
As the herb has no negative influence on them and as in the bible, there is
written in Psalm 104 “All the herbs that bearing seeds upon the land is made
for man.”, they think it is only forbidden to suppress them and claim the
legalization.
But
of course, this does not mean that every Reggae musician or even everyone who
listens to Reggae smokes marijuana. The South African singer Lucky Dube, for
example, is firmly against smoking. He sings “When the world gets hooked on
drugs, you and I are hooked on music (…) You see, when you smoke music, you
don’t have to smoke and hide”