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Holding On to Jah

ROGER LANDON HALL
USA, 2009, 98 minutes, Color and Black & White, film's website
In Person: Director Roger Landon Hall

There's lots of reggae music in this compelling documentary, whose interviewees include such reggae performers as Sugar Minott, U Roy, and Culture's Joseph Hill. Yet the film's main subject is not the music, but its inspiration: Rastafarianism. This evocative history opens with the arrivals of Columbus and slaves from Ghana and shows how back-to-Africa crusader Marcus Garvey, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, and the Book of Revelation—plus a little sacramental herb—shaped the music's outlook and aspirations. From mento and ska to rocksteady and finally reggae, Jamaica's sound sprouted in such slums as Kingston's Trench Town, the home of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and many more musical pioneers. Its global success owes something to having a rhythm that, as reggae historian Roger Steffens says here, "is the beat of a healthy human heart at rest." But it's also because reggae’s quest for peace and justice touches hearts worldwide. —Mark Jenkins

In English and Jamaican English with English subtitles

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