The past is recalled for a different purpose.25
The weaving that occurs in the braided hairstyles, the aspects of their temporality, their consistency as well as their adaptability, share many similarities with the oriki genre. What is this something else that oriki performances aim at? Simply posing this question highlights a profound difference between a Eurocentric concept of “history” and Afrocentric engagements with time. It is precisely the kind of investigation necessary if we are to respond with any seriousness to imperatives to “decolonize.”
The philosopher Elizabeth Grosz interrogates the discipline of “history” itself: she proposes that to be mired in the past is to be unable to think and act in the future. Yet conversely, to be unanchored in the past, to have no connections to, or resonances with, the past, is also to have no way to see or make a future; it is to have no place from which a future can be made that is different from the present. Well-being requires a judicious mix of the historical and the ahistorical, the timely and the untimely, the past and the future.26
While such a position remains controversial, even radical, in a European context, it is immediately recognizable among indigenous African cultural practices. In fact, scholars such as Ulli Beier inform us that “to Yoruba kings, praise singers and storytellers . . . ‘history’ is a means of explaining and justifying the present, rather than enlightening the past.”27
As Karin Barber explains:
the past is not the present, but it must be kept alive in the present, contiguous and accessible to it . . . to explain oriki as merely a means of justifying the status quo, or as reflections of present-day interests, is to miss the point of their most profound significance—their capacity to transcend time.28
Braided hairstyles have survived in the diaspora. Later on we will visit San Basilio de Palenque, one of the first independent towns in colonial South America, founded by escaped Africans. Some of these styles very closely resemble traditional Yoruba styles such as koroba and kolese. These styles could be understood as sharing many qualities with oriki.
Centuries of accumulated meaning are weaved into braids. The Africans who reached the Palenque often utilized maps they braided into their hair—hiding in plain sight, as it were. The enduring popularity of these styles ensures that the “past is . . . kept alive in the present, contiguous and accessible.” They operate as a direct bridge between the modern-day inhabitants of the Palenque and their African ancestors. One source describes them as the revisualization of centuries-old pathways to freedom, a symbolic representation of what was endured on this continent “that made us cry.” Yet today this pain has been transformed into embodied artworks, symbols of resistance and survival. Barber’s analysis of oriki applies just as well to any of these hairstyles:
The past is reactivated to the present . . . the past is evoked in the midst of the activity of the present generation.29
Perhaps it is partly this richly embedded meaning that gives irun didi (Yoruba braiding) its enduring relevance, which allows hairstyles that were already ancient in the 1600s to appear fresh, futuristic, and unique five centuries later.
The same characteristics that are found in braiding and in oriki can be seen in many other black cultural art forms. Recursion—where the output becomes the input—exists as much in music sampling as it does in hair braiding. Look at the difference between the European discipline of “history,” which locates action in an irrecoverable time past and in which events are approached as static, are preserved, frozen in aspic, and African methods of engaging the past, which have very different intentions. Examples as diverse as sampling, oriki, and braided hairstyles can all be understood as “coming from the past” and bringing “with them something of [the past’s] accumulated capabilities, the attributes of earlier powers,” yet while they are of the “here and now” they bring with them “the then.” Strand by strand, the past is weaved skillfully together with the present.
THE NATURAL HAIR MOVEMENT
The Natural Hair Movement could be understood as a collective reawakening of black women. It started in the US but soon spread across the diaspora to the UK, France, and back to Africa—French-speaking West Africa and South Africa particularly, as well as small communities in places such as Nigeria. Around 2010, my awareness of a change started when I discovered a website called Black Girl with Long Hair (BGLH), founded in 2009 by Leila Noelliste. It was the first time I really saw my hair texture acknowledged, let alone celebrated, anywhere—not only shiny, glossy curls but the matte, springy naps that can be twisted, stretched, coiled, and curled into any and every shape imaginable. As the name of the blog suggests, our hair can grow. One of the negative qualities attributed to Afro-textured hair is that it doesn’t grow. However, more often than not, this is the result of damaging practices or lack of knowledge. Now, I was presented with all these beautiful sisters rocking very chic fashion looks with their very own natural hair. And if they could do it, so could I! Couldn’t I?
Many women insist that their decision to go natural is not explicitly political. The fact that they even have to state this, however, shows how far from the norm black hair is still considered to be. Which other group of women on earth are expected to transform their features so drastically merely to fit in? While it may not be the expressed motivation for many, my decision to stop relaxing my hair was political. I emphatically still did not want to have Afro-textured hair, yet I could no longer reconcile my politics with chemically straightening it. I realized that, as a grown woman, I did not know my own hair. I was not familiar with its natural appearance or remotely in tune with its requirements.
Once you chemically straighten your hair, you can’t un-straighten it. It’s an irreversible process. The only option is the “big chop.” I would have to cut it short. Undoubtedly, all the images on BGLH helped, but, you know, I just wasn’t ready for short hair. The texture was bad enough, but in addition, willingly returning to a short Afro, conceding victory to a long-vanquished enemy, that was unimaginable!
But at last I stopped straightening my hair. I let my roots grow for a year before I cut off the straightened ends (in hindsight, I wish I’d gone for a close crop; it would have looked fab). The following year I became pregnant, and I finally did the thing.
CHOP!
I had various motivations. They say your hair grows quickly while you’re pregnant, but it was more than that. I knew that, if I had a daughter, it was crucial she did not grow up with the same warped concept of beauty I’d held. Moreover, if I was having a boy, such enlightenment was just as, if not more, crucial.
Undoubtedly, there was something in the air, a burgeoning collective reawakening, but it hadn’t yet gone mainstream. Let me be clear, though: this was not something I wanted to do, rather it was something I felt compelled to do, if not a punishment, exactly, then certainly a sacrifice, a political statement. Despite those bomb-ass-looking women on BGLH, I still felt it wouldn’t suit me, at least not as much as my long, sleek locks. But, down for the cause, I resigned myself to a future as a frumpy militant feminist. It is extraordinary for me to remember that, even at this stage, I couldn’t imagine myself as attractive with natural hair.