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Harrison Stafford was only 7 years old when he heard the distinctive one-drop rhythm of Bob Marley coming from his older brother’s room. He was hooked.
“My brother was listening to Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ album,” Stafford, now 37, recalled. “From that point on, I got all of Bob Marley’s music. I was in my own little world.”
Harrison would do presentations for his classmates on Rastafari, the spiritual movement that rose in Jamaica in the 1930s and was made famous by Marley.
“I was teased by the kids at school,” Stafford remembered. “At that time in Pleasanton there were not any other Jewish families either.”
With the advent of MTV, he looked forward to a reggae show but none appeared. He only realized later that reggae was underground music, never promoted or appreciated in the United States — except Bob Marley, whose albums sold in the millions, in this country and globally.
“For a lot of people, it’s very foreign, very different than what they’re used to,” Stafford explained. “It’s people from a Third World country, speaking about equal rights and justice … it really challenges society and questions authority and what is taking place in the world.”
Promoters were more interested in music that could sell products, Stafford said.
Music was an integral part of Stafford family life when Harrison was growing up — his father Dick was a jazz piano player who had even toured with Count Basie — so his folks accepted his devotion to reggae.
“Even my bar mitzvah was Jamaican,” Harrison Stafford said. “If their children had an interest, my parents embraced it.”
The Rastafari-Hebrew connection also spoke to Stafford.
“It is so biblical and speaks about the people of Abraham,” he said.
He considers Rastafari a way of life more than a religion.
“Religion is like something that divides people,” Stafford said. “Rastafari embraces the idea that all people come from God, we are all the human race, and we should treat each other as one.”
“Reggae and Rastafari are intertwined,” he added. “I taught the history of reggae, and there are two histories. One is the Jamaican popular music, which developed out of street music as well as the U.S. R&B. Reggae came out of musicians that learned instruments in the jazz way also to please tourists.”
Ska music came in the early 1960s, with songs about love and girls, Stafford said. Reggae came with a social message and fused with Rastafari, and spread into Kingston and the poor ghetto areas.
“We started to hear a social political type of movement, lyrics meant to address the listener, hopefully to have them reflect on life and live more positive,” he said.
Stafford graduated from Amador Valley High in 1996 and went on to Sonoma State University where he earned a degree in jazz performance. While in college he formed an international reggae-fusion group, Groundation, for which he is the lead singer and guitar player. He taught his reggae music class from 1999-2002.
“It was the first ever taught in the history of America,” Stafford said. “It took me two years to convince the music department that it was worth teaching and I was the one to teach it.”
During that time, he made several trips to Jamaica researching the subject, and sat with Rastafari elders to gain historical knowledge firsthand. His class often featured musicians and elder Rastafarians as guest lecturers.
Meanwhile his Pleasanton childhood friend Roger Landon Hall was studying film at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and he began to go to Sonoma to film the guest lectures. This was the impetus for a documentary the two have produced, “Holding on to Jah,” a comprehensive film on the history of roots reggae music and the Jamaican-based Rastafarian movement. “Jah” is the Rasta term for “God.”
Stafford said the film took on momentum in 2009 after Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme praised it, saying, “‘Holding on’ is so very beautiful … Every creative aspect shines in full effect … I watched it, fell in love with it, and delighted to a second viewing.”
Since then, the documentary has been screened and well received at film festivals including in Istanbul, Finland, Australia, Washington, D.C., and California.
Stafford put $40,000 of his own money into making the 97-minute film, but now he wants to release it on DVD, which means paying to license the music.
“Thirty-four songs are used in the film, and it is going to cost about $1,000 per song,” Stafford said.
“I’m not doing this to make money,” he noted. “I just want to see all this hard work about these beautiful people come to completion. I want to go to Jamaica and give to their children and grandchildren.”
“There’s a destiny thing,” he said. “If you want good things to happen to you, you have to put out good energies to the world. This is all part of who I am.”
Stafford lives in Tracy with his wife, who is Jamaican, and their 21-month-old daughter and a newborn little boy. Stafford is about to start Groundation’s 15th annual European tour, featuring the release of its new CD.
“I make my living touring outside of America — South America, Australia, New Zealand,” Stafford said. “We draw 5,000 in Paris and 10,000 in Sao Paulo. Groundation has a unique sound, reggae and elements of jazz.”
“Europeans heard that unique thing we were doing,” he continued. “Traditionally Europe has been a great place for jazz. It was the first place to embrace Bob Marley and Miles Davis. Europeans have a larger palate in their intake of music.”
For more information about Groundation, the documentary and its financing, visit www.groundation.com and www.holdingontojah.com.
