ENTITY · CULTURAL PRACTICE
Revival Zion
Well supported
The Afro-Jamaican religion that grew out of the nineteenth-century revivals, holding Christian scripture together with African practice -- drumming, dancing, spirit possession and the trumping of the ground. Its rhythms and its singing run underneath a great deal of Jamaican popular music, and much of what nyabinghi and later reggae drumming inherited comes through it.
Bishop Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, born 10 February 1911 in Byndloss, St Catherine, was the tradition's best-known public face -- he held revival ceremonies at Jamaica House in the 1980s that helped destigmatise the practice, and received Jamaica's Order of Distinction and a Gold Medal from Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie.
The annual Revival Pilgrimage to Watt Town, St Ann, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024.
At a glance
- Confidence
- Well supported
- Sources
- JIS (14 Feb 2025), "Preservation of Revivalism -- A Momentous Achievement for Jamaica"; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, "Pilgrimage to Watt Town".
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Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.
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