15/05/11

Bibliography is now complete! everything has been organised and referenced properly and therefor everything for my dissertation titled "Rastafarianism and its influence on the lyrics of reggae music" is done :D

I am so happy with everything i have achieved through doing this, my organisation, research and writing skills have vastly improved. and also i have a new found understanding in the religion of Rastafarianism.

So that concludes this Blogg.... hope you've enjoyed following me :)

take care

JP Parsons

07/03/11

Sorry for missing a week back there... I was away for a photoshoot down in Essex with my band Eat Dr. Ape. I have made some progress with the Rastafarianism background section of my study. Talking of their concept of what 'Babylon' is and how it has become a highly important part of the faith in which they believe. hopefully I make a good bit of progress in the next week. :)

JP

21/02/11

Well Iv managed to started writing about the background of Rastafarianism and so far its proving a tough one as I want to give the reader an appropriate understanding of the faith. This week i have focused on its origins in Ethiopia stemming from Marcus Gravy's prophesy of a black king appearing in Ethiopia... this came in the form of Haile Selassie. I feel I have learnt a great deal about the faith in the past week and hopefully the progress continues:

JP

14/02/11

This week I haven managed to achieve as much as I would have liked as im starting to get into the bad habit of writing lots, the being over critical and deleting it! So im quite disappointed with the amount I have managed to achieve... hopefully get more done next week! Im still work ing through the history of the faith and its proving to be rather cryptic to say the least.

JP

07/02/11

Well I found a quote to open my dissertation with! I chosen a quote from Roy Shukers 2nd edition of his book 'Popular Music; The Key Concepts'. It reads: ‘Reggae is strongly associated with Rastafari, variously considered as a social movement, a religious cult, and a Jamaican subculture, which came out of the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica in the 1950s.’ I feel this is a great way to open my study. Also I have now finished my introduction and have been advised to now move onto talk about the background of the faith of Rastafarianism.

JP

31/01/11

first of all Happy New year all!!! That's us all back at college now and its time to get on with this dissertation! Iv started thinking about my intro and i have shown the first part of it to my advisor and so far she seems to be quite happy with it. She has given me some great constructive criticism on it so I will now go back and correct it accordingly and open the paper with a qhote like she has suggested.

JP

17/12/10

Well today was submission day! Oh my god the amount of stress iv been put through in the last 8 hours is unreal!!!! I realy hope i dont EVER have to be put through that again! I got the literature review handed in but im not happy with it at all! my referencing was awful! I realy dont think ive got a good mark for that :(

Anyway im gonna sign off for the next few weeks as its Christmas time... hope everyone has a good one!

JP

13/12/10

This week I have shown my advisor my progress with my Literature review. She can tell im struggling as I have to admit I am not 100% clear on what the true purpose of it is. she has given me a few pointers in how to go about completing it but to be honest its not much clearer.... im starting to panic! Its due on friday!!!!!!!

JP

06/12/10

Hello!!! Well I have managed to complete a good few notes on Bass Culture... I have found it quite informative and i have managed to pick up a couple of very appropriate quote out of it. Literature review has to be in a week on friday so im starting to worry about that! Because i have been lazy and haven realy started it! That my fault though for being stupid, but im sure il get it done... anyway till next week!

JP

09/05/11

That's my conclusion to my dissertation all done now :) took a while but got there in the end. I feel it somes up my findings well and is a good we to round up all my hard work.

The end is near!!!! :D

JP

02/05/11

I have now started concluding my study. I am struggling with it slightly as I am finding it a lot harder than i first anticipated it being. I am wanting to take my time over this conclusion as so far I feel my study has been meeting quite a high standard and i dont want the last paragraph to let it down!

JP

18/04/11

Over the past 2 weeks i have been researching and writing about modern day reggae artists like Ziggy Marley (son of bob) and Bedouin Soundclash. I have found it really interesting how still to this day reggae artists are drawing religious influence from the faith of Rastafari. Its not just the die hard reggae artist either who are being inspired by the word of 'Jah', reggae fusion artists such as Ben Harper and Finlay Quaye mention both the spiritual smoking of Marijuana and the Lion of Judah.

I am now ready for the conclusion... then end is near!!!! :)

JP

04/04/11

Over the past while I have been researching more into the lyrics of reggae music and how the can be related to the faith of Rastafarianism. Iv now written about old skool reggae band Toots and the Maytals and have found some very interesting things which i have included in my study. I then managed to move onto the Reggae Britannia era.. basically meaning the vast influx of reggae onto the UK. Amazingly i have managed to find British reggae bands that draw inspiration from this predominantly Caribbean/African religion. Artists like UB40, Musical Youth and Aswad all can be seen to have inspiration from the faith.

JP

28/03/11

I have now started researching into the various reggae artists who draw inspiration from the faith of Rastafarianism for their lyrics. The obvious and most logical place for me to start has been with reggae icon and legend Bob Marley. Being the so called Prophet of Rastafarianism it was pretty much garnteed the I would find some strong links within his lyric choice. This i feel has got the main body of my study off to a good start and will stand me in good stead for the rest of my dissertation.

JP

21/03/11

I Have now finished my background of Rastafarianism instalment in my dissertation. I was a lot harder than I thought it would be but I would definitely say that it has been most beneficial to my area of study as i now know what I am looking for with in the lyrics of reggae songs. Over the past week I concluded this background research by talking about the Rastafarians I-tal diet and their use of spiritual Marijuana. I also came to learn that they dont believe in the drinking of alcohol which i found very interesting.

Next up il shall begin my association with Rastafarianism and the lyrics of reggae music.

JP

14/03/11

This past week Iv have been researching and writing about the general appearance and mannerisms of the Rastafari. I have learnt a great deal about the meaning behind their choses colours of Red, Yellow, Black and Green. I have also learnt a lot of the origins of Dreadlocks. Research has also begun into their interesting eating habits and overall diet and beliefs towards Alcohol and Drug use so this will be written about next week.

JP