Creativity Quote by Dennis Brown

There is a whole diaspora story tucked into the casualness of “But now.” Dennis Brown isn’t describing a vacation; he’s narrating a pivot in consciousness. The line sounds offhand, almost conversational, yet it carries the weight of a long Rastafarian tradition in reggae: Africa as origin, as promise, as political idea, as spiritual compass. “Getting” matters here. It frames motivation as something received, dawning, arriving through music, faith, community, or hardship rather than manufactured by ego. Brown positions himself less as a star plotting a trip than as a person being called.

The phrase “spiritual motivation” is doing double duty. On the surface, it signals devotion, pilgrimage energy, a desire to connect with ancestral roots. Underneath, it’s a coded critique of postcolonial reality in Jamaica and the wider Black Atlantic: when the local world feels constricted by poverty, violence, and exploitation, Africa becomes both alternative and mirror. In reggae, that longing is rarely naive; it’s a mix of hope, myth, and a sober awareness of displacement.

Context sharpens the stakes. Brown came of age as reggae moved from dancehall pleasure to roots militancy and back again, with Rastafari’s Pan-African imagination circulating as everyday language. For an artist whose voice often carried tenderness and resolve at once, the line reads like an internal drumbeat: not “I should go,” but “I can’t not go.” It’s the sound of identity becoming itinerary.