The lasting legacy of Rasta Rafiki.
On Friday, October 11, Morgantown’s own Rasta Rafiki returns to 123 Pleasant Street. After 34 years together, every reunion for the band is a celebration of time, good memories, and their beloved reggae music.
As a young adult, my friends and I went to lots of Rasta Rafiki shows at Nyabinghi Dance Hall, which became 123 Pleasant Street. My favorite memory of the band is New Year’s Eve 1992. Rafiki played with Rusted Root, a Pittsburgh band on the cusp of fame with their catchy song “Send Me on My Way.” My girlfriends and I all donned our finest and dined before the show across the street from Nyabinghi at the old La Casa Mexican restaurant. The show was phenomenal—I had personally never experienced anything like the high energy of a small club or the magic of Rasta Rafiki. We were 18 and 19 years old and we danced all night long, sweated and smiled, flirted with boys, and danced some more.
In 1992, youthful music lovers fell into two groups—those who loved Nirvana and those who worshiped the Grateful Dead, aka Deadheads. The Dead had made a resurgence in 1987 with their song “Touch of Grey,” and a new generation of fans was born. If you loved the Dead, it was easy to love Rafiki, yet Rafiki’s sound was and is even more joyful—staccato chords, deep bass, up-tempo. Reggae is a blend of many genres—soul, ska, mento, calypso, R&B, jazz, African, and Latin American music. Rafiki’s lyrics speak to messages of love and unity—an elm tree’s shade, the human race as cousins, daydreamin’ all day long.
On Halloween 1990, they played their first show at “the big house,” a party house in South Park. They began to regularly play the Nyabinghi and eventually toured up and down the East Coast. Today, they are regular guests at the Blue Heron Festival in Sherman, New York, and the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, New York. Although the seven members currently live in different places and have various day jobs, they all continue to play music. They reunite in Morgantown from time to time, and fans come from far and wide—one of my own friends, a Rafiki groupie, is coming from Parkersburg this weekend.
Anointed matriarch of the band Mary Jo Shick, who has known them since the early days and is married to guitarist Tom Batchelor, speaks of the band’s resilience. “They are all still alive. They all get along. No one has major drug or alcohol issues. No woman has ever come between them.”
Batchelor himself says, “You realize that Rasta Rafiki and the music is an entity of its own, and you were just fortunate enough to be a part of it.” It’s kind of like the title of one of their songs. “Imagine: Your dream for real!”
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