“The tide that is sweeping Africa cannot be stayed. No force on earth is great enough to halt or reverse the trend. Its march is as relentless and inexorable as the passage of time.”
- H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie Ist, April 18 1960
Greetings in the divine name of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie Ist. I am Dejazmatch Kwasi Bonsu,
Esq., a Ras Tafari creative. I am an entertainment attorney, artist, actionist and soon to be author.
On May 13, 2020, I was inspired to initiate a Zoom meeting to explore the creation of a “Ras Tafari Music Industry Association.” The meeting opened with a psalm of King David and closed with a speech of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie Ist. This would become the standard for all subsequent meetings of what would eventually be named the Association of RasTafari Creatives, or ARC.
If we consider Ras Tafari as a nation, our largest export sector would be the Creative Industries. It was from this basic realization that ARC was born, even though the idea itself was not new. In fact, harnessing the power of Ras Tafari in the Creative Industries was one of the twenty-two resolutions that came out of the 1983 Ras Tafari International Theocratic Assembly (RITA) conference at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.
At our historic first meeting, the following were discussed:
1. Creating a draft charter to define mission and requirements for membership;
2. Ideas for monetizing the online space (i.e. online concerts, unique online experiences with artists, telethon type events, online auctions, etc.); and
3. Inviting other serious Ras Tafari ones in the Creative Industries to the next call.
It was later decided that the ARC mission would be to develop an association of RasTafari Creatives to facilitate funding and public relations support for projects and programs that are in line with the vision of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie 1st concerning Africans at home and abroad. Now, ARC consists of a variety of departments, including Land Acquisition and Development, Agriculture, Education, Di Yute Dem, Social Welfare and others. It is a good time to spread word to RasTafari Creatives globally and let them know that they have a home at the ARC.
Let us give thanks to H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie Ist that finally, with the establishment of ARC, RasTafari Creatives a conneck’!