Holidays & Festivals
Groundation Day
Rastafari Festivals
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Groundation Day, the twenty first of April, marks Emperor Haile Selassie's 1966 visit to Jamaica, one of the most significant dates in the Rastafari calendar. It is observed with Nyabinghi Issemblies, communal gatherings that can run for several days and combine drumming, chanting and reasoning sessions around a bonfire.
History & Origin
Accounts of the day tell of a crowd so large and so overwhelmed at Kingston's airport that Haile Selassie's plane could not immediately be approached for its planned welcome, and that the Rastafari elder Mortimer Planno boarded to calm the emperor before he would come down the steps into the crush. The scene, however it is told in detail, is why the date became fixed in the movement's own calendar rather than treated as an ordinary state visit.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Jamaica directly: "Emperor Haile Selassie's 1966 visit to Jamaica, one of the most significant dates in the Rastafari calendar."
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