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Culture region, Jamaica

Kingston

Jamaica's capital, where the Rastafari made locks a sign of faith and Bob Marley carried them around the world.

Kingston, Jamaica's capital, is where the Rastafari movement grew in the 1930s after the coronation of Haile Selassie as emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. From the late 1940s and 1950s, Rastafari brethren let their hair grow into locks as a sign of their vow and their rejection of Babylon, the oppressive system. Through reggae, above all Bob Marley, Kingston's locks became known worldwide.

Locks and faith

For many Rastafari, locks follow the Nazirite vow in the Bible's Book of Numbers, which forbids cutting the hair of one consecrated to God, and they are linked to the image of the lion. Locks are grown, not styled, and are often covered with a knitted tam in red, gold and green. Rastafari faced police raids and hostility in Jamaica in the 1950s and 1960s, and their hair was seen as a mark of rebellion. Some Rastafari women wear headwraps over their locks.

Reggae and the world

From the 1970s reggae musicians, especially Bob Marley, whose home at 56 Hope Road in Kingston is now a museum, took Rastafari locks to audiences across the world. The style was adopted by people of many backgrounds, sometimes without its religious meaning. In Jamaica, school rules against locks have long been debated: a case over a young girl told to cut her locks to attend primary school reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the school's rules in 2020, a decision argued over across the island.

Hairstyles of Kingston

DreadlocksThe locks of the Rastafari faithHead tieHeadwraps worn by Rastafari women

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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