Doctor Alimantado: "God's throne is where the rastaman is."

Give thanks & praises

"It has everything to do with the Almighty. Ever since I was child I gave my life and my body to the Almighty and he has taken it through some unbelievable experiences. I have not gone after the fame or after the money but I've tried to establish the Almighty and He looked favourable on me. I can't say why I'm still in the people's mind, but I give thanks and praises to all the people who have supported me and all the other reggae artists. Because we are not here as individual people but as a unit of people that come here to do our works, everybody in his own way, some a bit more serious than others. History will declare what we have actually done in our lifetime."

Roots man consciousness

"I was born in it. What was very significant was the amount of hardship, fear and brutality that the majority of the Jamaican people went through in those days, instigated by a minority of people. Boys and girls of my generation stood up and said 'It's enough'. Our parents beat us very hard for us to fall in line with the system but we could have it. Little did we know that we as a people had nothing to do with what we did. We were like a tool, doing a work for the Almighty. People like me came from inside the rasta community to the reggae community, others came from the music community to the rasta community. They saw what we endured, the sufferation and the tribulation that the system put us through, and they realized that the system accused us wrongly. And they observe us, how we live, how we eat, how we drink, how we walk, how we talk, how we work, and they find something in it. And they try to uplift themselves by following the way of the people who were downtrodden."

"Most rastas used to go to church but there they could find nothing modern, nothing new, nothing sacred, nothing true. All they could find was lies, lies and more lies. The person on the pulpit telling one thing could be seen around the corner doing something else. What the church preaches and what the people who preach there do are completely different stories. We were a generation that was seeking the truth and that set us free."

Moral lies

"Most religions are honest and true. The problem lies in the way people define their religion. The priests and the bishops have put themselves in the place of God. They did not highlight their human weaknesses and put themselves above the other people. The rastas come to look at these weaknesses and let them be the strength, by accepting them as weaknesses. We are not perfect, we can be wrong. You have rasta who is selling drugs, rasta who is doing bad, but in the church everybody pretend to be doing good. It's not like that in life. That means the church is actually covering up things with lies. Moral lies about the true nature of man. They excuse themselves when doing wrong instead of coming clean to the congregation."

"I know that rasta will be adapted by all nations and all tongues, and it will be corrupted like any other religion. Because that's the nature and the beauty of mankind. They take something that is holy and make it unholy. They take something that is pure and make it unpure. So we, the rastas, have to find a way to get through to the people, without any guns, without any knives, without any fight or quarrel. We believe that the world is tired of bloodshed. You can't say you love God and shed blood, no matter who you are, poor man or prime minister, beggar, liar, thief of president. Every drop of blood that you shed belongs to someone who got it through the life that God gave him. One you shed that blood, you shed a lot of peoples' spirit and those things will come to haunt you for generations."

"Rasta is not recognized so we don't have the power to do anything. We just have the love of God to give."

His Imperial Majesty

"People who have been, for centuries!, brought up with the idea of God in the sky or God as Jesus, will not understand His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I and how this divine being can be a mortal man. A man came whom all people who walked and talked with him since the day of creation identify with but still they don't see it. In Ethiopia people will say a lot of things about His Majesty but the same thing happens with Bob Marley in Jamaica. In all other countries he's like a saint or a prophet. Now if this man comes out of a slave colony that has existed for 500 years and has risen to this position, what about a man that comes out of a lineage that was ordained by the Almighty through his priests and prophets himself? Confirmed by the leaders of all the churches of all the countries in the world. They made that man King of Kings, Lord of Lords. According to what they themselves told us, those names can not be owned by a mortal man. But they still give him that name!"

"Ethiopians are near to the river but still they're dying for thirst. People from abroad have to come to make them realize, just like people come to Jamaica to declare Bob Marley a prophet. Everybody around the world wants to come to Europe because this is the place where you're supposed to get rich or famous. But the people in Europe, they don't appreciate Europe! Why then should the people of Ethiopia respect His Imperial Majesty when they can just go around the corner and see him? In Ethiopia there's always two sides: for and against. For example: Lyj Yasu was supposed to be the new emperor after Menelik II but he disrespected his traditions and was made to leave. By this time there was a young regent growing up who was a governor from the age of seven. Can you imagine that? You can't show me no other human being that can manage a whole province!"

"We are all part of God, we make it go on. But like a chain on a bicycle you have to have a master link and that was established a long time ago in the house of David. First in the house of Saul but his livity wasn't right. God shall walk with David's children and his children and his children's children. Nothing has history has changed that. So when a child is born in the house of David and gets a position of authority and sits on the throne of David, that's David again."

It's easier for a camel...

"God's throne can never be disoccupied. But it can be moved. Right here at this moment we have the throne with us. You can not take away from a human being what is in him. And even if man is gone, the lions will sit upon the throne, or the ants, or the cockroaches, or the plants, or the trees, because all those things are part of life. God never gave us a brain that's inferior to his brain. He gave us a brain that's equal to his brain, that's why we are able to create so much things."

"It benefits the rulers to keep us in darkness and to keep us doing what they want. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter in Zion. So if a rich man can't get to Zion, he makes sure that the poor man never will either. He uses money to block the eye of the needle."

His Imperial Majesty Continued

"His Imperial Majesty is without a doubt a divine inspiration. He is a correct example for mankind; his words and his life represent his correctness. If we should adapt that way the world would be a much better place. If our leaders would adapt that way, countries around the world would live much better. But if you divide the world in religions and countries, you go a different way. When I come to Belgium I have to have a passport but God never give me no passport or say to me that I belong to one place. At the same time, everything that is in Europe comes from outside Europe. There's this big plan to take all of the earths resources and take them to this one place, like in the time of the famine with Joseph. And everybody has to come to this one place. They use that as a tool to control and manipulate us, both mentally and physically. They take away your rights. You give them their power and than they use it against you. One lifetime is not long enough for an individual to change anything but through generations we can do a lot."

"Everybody is trying to find God, or at least a way to elevate stress, worries, problems and bad vibes. We the rastas give the world something. It will take a long time for many people to understand what we actually say and do and give. But by the grace of the Almighty they will see, although I don't think it will come through in the next 5000 years."

From Addis to Kingston

"In the days of slavery there was a portion of the children of the lineage of David. They were nomads who travel across the African peninsula and also to Europe. There is no royal throne that is not linked to the original royal throne. Actually, there's two thrones, one for God and one for Satan. You just have to know which one you are bowing to. Satan, that's Pharaoh's lineage of rulers who don't have any righteous intentions. Mussolini had the pharaoh blood, Hitler had the pharaoh blood. There's a lot of knowledge that's supposed to be known by the people which could let them understand things a bit better, but you will not see it in the daily newspaper."

"The reason why the church has banned so many books is because if you allow to know the people the truth, you have a big problem. You will not need any government, nor any states or churches. The government is meant to look about your physical well being, your way of life. The church is meant to look about your spiritual well being. If you put those things together you have life in a nutshell."

Ital food

"Most of the things that are going on in society right now is what rasta has been talking about for the last thirty, forty years. Health food, ital food!, has become a major industry. But we don't make anything from it. No matter what you do as a poor man or as an African is being controlled by Europe. There was a time when rasta was known as madmen, in the next twenty years everything we did was meant to be right and we were meant to be intelligent, literate people."

Slackness

"There are a lot of influences that come along. Some of them are induced. There is hardly any religion or way of life that is not corrupted. Reggae has been a guiding light and a source of inspiration for a lot of people around the world. The music that we make, Bob Marley, our generation, has opened that door for everybody. But a lot of these foundation people were either killed or forced out of Jamaica and out of our communities. In the same time there was a series of bad vibes that steal reggae, going back to Yellowman talking about gal business, Barnabas Collins, and then it goes to slackness, and gun talk, and batty man lyrics, and this and that. In my opinion all of that was induced. I don't know by who but what we give is a clean honest teaching that not corrupt anybody's mind. It takes people out of corruption. It never separates, it unites. On a reggae concert you can see everybody, all nations, all religions, all kings. It seems like some forces in the world realized what reggae was doing and they tried to rip it apart. There was a time in the eighties when I couldn't understand what was happening in reggae music, not even the lyrics."

Boboshanti

"The Bobo's see Prince Emmanuel as an equal to His Imperial Majesty. I've known Emmanuel from when I was a child. Whenever there is unity, it's always infiltrated and corrupted, and Europeans have a lot to answer for. I remember living in the rasta camp, eating, sleeping, drinking, and in those days no European could claim that they were rasta. It was not open. It had to be closed, structured and defined, and then we could give it. But the coming of Bob Marley took the teachings out of its secluded area and spread it across the globe; and the Europeans were not able to manage it. They could not control it. They were looking for the truth, couldn't find in the church or the schools, but they found it in rasta. You don't have to be Jamaican or African, you just have to be truthful to yourself. Than you also become truthful to your brothers and sisters around you. Once they found it the system had no more control so they went to Jamaica and they influenced the promoters and the producers of the time. You see youths emerging who did not have the teachings that we have. They never meet the same elders we met. The elders I met were only human beings for me to see them but they were not human. They were like His Majesty. It will take me another thousand years to understand who these people really were. People who can tell you what is the material that make water, that make the air, who is God, who is God mother, who is God father, what make the sun, the moon, the stars, these people could explain everything."

"When I was young Prince Emmanuel was also a student and taking teachings from the same elders. But once you've learned enough, once you get the right keys for the doors, you become like them. That's what the youths could find in him, someone who was near to them and could them whatever they wanted to know."

Black supremacy

"You have to look at the years of abuse that the Africans went through. This is about black people who is trying to eleviate the European super behaviour. They own everything. Some Europeans will never see a black person as an equal, only as some tools that they can use. They will never see us as people they can sit with and talk to as equal human beings. This is affecting the black race a lot, all around the world. We, the rastas, we see it but we don't give it any attention. We pretend that it's not there."

"No African king or ruler or business mandcan come to Europe and dictate what happens to Europe. But it doesn't take a leader or a king from Europe to dictate what Africa has to do. It just takes a man in a white skin. When such things happen, you can always expect a counter reaction. A lot of people might feel threatened by the behaviour of the bobo but their behaviour will not help in what we are trying to achieve. It will only make it worse. If you want to be above people, finally you are going to be below them. The same goes for the people they call the batty boys. The people they call the batty boys used to be in hiding, in corners, underground. They were beaten, batty boys were fighting against batty boys because some of them got married. Mr Respectable in the day, but at night… Now they are in control. You can't say anything about them. Anything that you fight down will rise above you. ,ow the batty boys can literally make the guys who fight against them shut up. But that is not the rasta fight. The rasta don't cope for flesh and blood. Flesh and blood lives for 100 years maximum. We are not fighting physicality but spiritual wickedness in high and low places. There is no colour of a wicked, no class or country. Only two forces run the earth: good and evil. If you pick out one particular thing and you highlight it, and you keep fighting it, that thing will fisrt go underground but one day it will come up and smack you in the face. We see that with the Africans who went into slavery. The were subjugated to great inhuman suffering for 500 years and look how we rise. We rise above it. Now everybody likes what we do, how we walk, how we talk. We're infecting the whole world."

"Most of the princes and princesses that come from the Ethiopian bloodline you can not stop is. Because it doesn't rule by money, by work or by house, it rule by a spiritual being. Wherever a rasta is, that's where the throne is."

Rootsreggae rules for I-ver & I-ver

"The truth never grows old. What we did was the truth and will always be the truth. Dancehall music is something to dance but you can not dance all your life. Roots music talks about life. In future times people will regard roots music as an extension of the bible."

"We just did what we felt and the world could feel the vibes and the innocence. It came directly out of the rasta camp. Rasta has everything to do with the development of reggae."