“We Should Be Louder”: Rastafari, Amplified Spirituality, and Spacemaking in Shashemene, Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract Rastafari who repatriated themselves to Ethiopia in the belief that it is their Promised Land create sacred spaces by amplifying their praises to Haile Selassie through drumming, chanting, and sound systems. Members of the repatriated Rastafari community in Ethiopia employ multiple approaches to amplification as a strategy for working through and against the limitations of space, visibility, audibility, and already-established notions of what it means to be religious. I show that amplification is a significant domain through which the practices of spirituality and spacemaking can be combined, contested, and mobilized within a politics of belonging, fulfilment, and acceptance.