Underscored by electric rainstorms ("Jah pouring libations," according to one dreadlocked festival-goer), the 19th annual Chicago observance of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's birthday honored a figure held to be divine by Rastafarians worldwide.

Regardless of its religious overtones, the free weekend-long Haile Selassie Reggae Festival held in Washington Park was a cultural and culinary feast.

Headliners Sister Carol and dub poet Mutabaruka gave commanding performances Sunday night. Unaccompanied and dressed in a flowing purple bouba, Mutabaruka (Allan Hope) ripped through a series of "confusions," with poems such as "Whiteman Country" and "Junk Food," which he preceded by asking, "Which part of the chicken is the nugget?"

But Mutabaruka's most cutting remarks came on the subject of religion, where he berated Rastafarians for "talking too much about Africa and not walking enough to get there--Africa is a land, not a state of mind."

Mutabaruka also contrasted the popularly constructed color coordination of heaven and hell: "Heaven has white angels with white beards on white clouds playing white harps while the only color in the afterlife is in hell--the red or black devil and flames. I want to go to hell."

Sister Carol (East) was no less frontal, but she had other issues. Leading the next generation of reggae women after Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt and Rita Marley, who came of age in the '60s and '70s, Sister Carol, who has been singing professionally since 1981, is one of a few women to thrive in reggae as a socially conscious deejay.

Backed by the Hi-Life Band out of New York, the tireless deejay and singer performed for nearly two hours, running through songs from her many albums, including the latest, "Lyrically Potent" (Heartbeat). Her lyrics sometimes sounded like placards: "No more prisons but child-care facilities, better housing and more jobs," she sang. In "Dread Natty Congo," Mama Culture, as she is known, went to the place of so much angst for black women--the hair salon--and made her wishes known: "Not a perm, not a weave--no want no false hair/Gimme me 'fro and me braids and me dreadlocks, ma dear."

Amiable and full of wit, Sister Carol interpolated and answered Shabba Ranks, Capelton and a slew of other male deejays in the perpetual conversation that is reggae music.

Other acts included the magnetic dancehall duo of Devon Brown and Kelly Ranking, who bounced off each other lyrically and jounced like the roughriders that they are. In their sing-and-then-chant paean to ganja, a medley which quoted dozens of reggae refrains extolling marijuana, Brown and Ranking again demonstrated their vocal versatility as well as their ability to bring a crowd to jump-up pandemonium.

Their performance again brought out the 1950s beginnings of dance-hall reggae, when sound system deejays used to "sweet-talk" back to American R&B records or subvert the proper English with chants or "toasts" in Jamaican patois.

The festival, which is always held the last weekend of July, also featured numerous other musicians, poets, dancers and performers in addition to visual art.

By Rohan B Preston. Special to the Tribune

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