The Rastafarian colors are red, gold, and green. Some people include black in that color scheme as well, but it’s role in the color scheme is sometimes disputed.

Rasta colors appear throughout reggae music and the Rastafarian world in general, whether on Rasta flags, reggae clothing, or Bob Marley posters. Any long-time dub or reggae fan is likely to encounter them repeatedly.

The 3 Rastafarian colors each have symbolic meaning in the Rasta religion:

• Red, the color of the blood of the people and the Church of Triumphant (the Rasta church).
• Gold (sometimes simply yellow) for the wealth of Africa, the Rasta homeland.
• Green for the land and vegetation of Ethiopia, the promised land.

The Rasta color scheme – red, gold, green – is also the color scheme of Ethopia’s flag in the 1800s. At that time the flag also included the Lion of Zion, the promised land. Ethiopia is the promised land in the Rastafarian belief system; it Mount Zion, heaven on earth. Some Rastas interpret the need to repatriate Ethiopia as a spiritual, rather than physical, directive, and achieve it in part by surrounding themselves with Ethiopian colors and symbolism.

Black is sometimes cited instead of yellow in the Rastafarian color scheme – red, black, and green were the colors of Marcus Garvey‘s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Because Garvey is often cited as a Rasta prophet, it makes sense that his organization’s colors would be adopted. However, there are clear distinctions between Marcus Garvey’s empowerment movement and the specifics of the Rastafarian religion.

The Rasta colors symbolize not only strength but loss and longing: red is the blood that was shed by the martyrs throughout Rasta history, yellow is the gold stolen from the people, and green is the land to which Rastas hope to return.

Rasta colors have a strong tie to reggae music. Bob Marley made Rastafarianism popular throughout the world, and with it the Rasta colors red, gold, and green. The 1982 Steel Pulse album True Democracy includes the song Dub’ Marcus Say, which explained the colors. Here’s a video of Steel Pulse playing a similar song, Rally Round, live in Argentina.

Steel Pulse explains the Rastafarian colors with these lyrics:

Marcus say sir, Marcus say
Red for the blood
That flowed like the river
Marcus say sir, Marcus say
Green for the land Africa
Marcus say
Yellow for the gold
That they stole
Marcus say
Black for the people
It was looted from

Today, some take these Rastafarian colors to define an inclusive, expansive Rastafarianism, with red symbolizing the life blood of all living things, gold symbolizing all treasures that we cherish and enjoy, and green for the whole earth that we all share. But this definition reads as more of a New Age definition of connections than the more exclusive traditional Rastafarianism would seem to lend itself to.

Some Rastas claim the gold comes from the Jamaican flag, which is green, gold, and black. Others dispute this assertion, claiming that Jamaica is Babylon and therefore unholy.

It is also said that red always goes below the other colors because blood flows downward.