When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music
When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music

A battery tape playing in the street
My only relief
All we have is just the music

No matter what the crisis
It keep the spirit lively
Just as you feeling blue
Well I'll be there for you

When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music
When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music

Pretty girls dance in the street
My only relief
All we have is just the music

There ain't no dance
Unless you have good music
If you don't have good music
Then you don't have a chance

When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music
When the lights gone out and the food run out
All we have is just the music

And a battery tape playing in the street
My only relief
All we have is just the music

When The Lights Gone Out – Ziggy Marley

Jamming and chanting to the music still restores my soul even more than the blood I drink to keep my flesh and bones strong. Without it, there would be no way for one such as me to be at peace with this vampire thing we got going on now.

Dada was a deeply spiritual Rastafari man, and him raised me to have a healthy disdain for “Babylon”, which for him meant all things of an established order that smelled of corruption. These included the government, most businesses, and the Beasts (police), who assist them in denying us our freedom to celebrate life, as it should be lived. Madda was a maker of those beads the women sometimes weave into their hair. She used to sing to me many songs at night about the Creator, Jah, and the Holy land known as Ethiopia, while I was growing to be a man.

When I got to be a teenager I thought it was fun to behave like a bad bwai and make lots of trouble for everyone. One night, after I got caught sneaking into one of those houses up in the hills off the coast near the resorts where the rich white celebrities sometimes live in the good weather months to steal a set of good speakers, Dada got very angry and called me a blackheart man. This is not a good thing to be.

It was then that him and I went far away into the backcountry of Jamaica where the tourists don’t come and which is also far from the cities where the political corruption thrives. He wanted me to be taught the ways of the Rastas and learn proper respect for Jah and lift up my voice in ises that praise him. I fell into a state of real peace there. Things seemed to come together in ways that they never had before. I be guessing that some of ya know what I mean.

For a while I really took to that stuff, especially the ganja. I was going to be the holiest of holy men and become the gorgon, by growing the dreadlocks longer than any others. I began to say Jamaica was Babylon too, and rant that I wanted to go home to Mother Ethiopia, a place that I had never seen and knew very little about, except that many there were poorer than we were.

Then I got asked to become a roadie, and later a guitar player for a local reggae band. Again, the music grab a hold of me soul and I have to follow where it leads me. We got pretty famous, mon! By and by the touring and one night stands in hotel rooms took their toll on my plans to become Jamaica’s next great prophet. So many pretty ladies, so many bowls of the smoke, and other stuff that was not so nice. By then, the people I was hanging with did not black up to contemplate ways to love Jah so much. Sometimes it just seemed like the only way to get rid of dem headaches we had from staying up all day and night jamming. I knew I was losing my way when it came to finding real enlightenment, but it was like a train that does not stop.

It must be destiny that I finally did end up in Ethiopia, long after I had stopped chanting the ises prayers of the Rastafarian, who longs to return there as it is believed to be our true ancestral home. By the time I got there I was your usual jaded rock and roll star, and did not really give a damn about Ethiopian history. Some might think Jah placed a hex on me for forgetting all of the things Dada had taught to me about this faraway country I suddenly found myself in. Others might see what happened to me there as a gift, meant to remind me of the eternal things we all share. It did not take long for me to have a good reason to remember one of the stories I had learned during my time in the hills. The great ancient Queen of Ethiopia, Makeda, whom many now call Sheba, had once traveled far from her country to meet the legendary King Solomon. While there, he gave her his seed and she returned to give birth to the first Emperor of Ethiopia, her son Melenik. Rastafarian’s believe Melenik’s descendant was the last King of Ethiopia, Haille Selassi, also known as Lion of Judah, and likened to a God himself.

I soon found out that there is a lot more to that story than my Dada ever dreamed of. In Ethiopia I met my own fate through an encounter with the most beautiful woman I was ever to lay eyes on. She was not Jamaican, or Ethiopian, but when she gave me the Dragons kiss I learned there is a continuity and harmony in all things. Jah be praised for this eternity in which I now have all the time in the world to understand such mysteries, and still keep on jammin to the reggae beat.