A Metaphysical Operation

Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form
by Michael Sims

(Page 7 of 8)

The story of Samson is about the sheer power of hair its magical strength, its religious energy, as interpreted from its hardy nature. But the symbolic relevance of hair did not die with Samson in the temple of Dagon; it thrives today. Even Nazirite convictions survive. The only people who maintain a strictly traditional Nazirite lifestyle are the Falashas, the black Jews of Ethiopia, but the roots of the related Rastafarian movement also date all the way back to the time of Samson.

The Ras in Rastafarian is a title meaning "prince." Born in Ethiopia in 1892, Lij Tafari Makonnen became Haile Selassie upon his coronation as emperor in 1930. Only the year before, Marcus Garvey, the head of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, had predicted that soon a leader would arise in Ethiopia. With one of Africa's longest recorded histories, Ethiopia claims that its government traces all the way back to King Menelik I, who ruled in the eleventh century b.c.e. and who supposedly was the son of Sheba and Solomon. Believers consider Ras Tafari to have been a lineal descendant of this colorful pair. Such a genealogy would be a fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that, in due course, a Redeemer would arise from the House of David. Rastafarians have an ambivalent relationship with the Bible. For example, they consider the story of the Hebrews' years of slavery to be the deliberately corrupted and misrepresented history of the black races, but they find in the Nazirite tradition the divine rationale for dreadlocks.

Few hairstyles are as dramatic. Although they are no longer as politically charged as when they first appeared, the long, wild-looking locks are still regarded by many as a symbol of political unity and ethnic pride. Like Christianity, Rastafarianism grew out of the dreams of an oppressed people. It promised deliverance, in the form of a millennarian repatriation to "Zion" (Ethiopia); authorized the use of ganja (marijuana) as a sacramental tool of enlightenment; and offered the possibility of a group identity, not least with its signature hairstyle.

Dreadlocks were not native to Jamaica. The Rastas imported the style. In Kenya in the early 1950s, many local whites resisted the dissolution of the old British colonial government. The native Kikuyu responded with a guerrilla insurrection, the so-called Mau Mau uprising. Photographs of the Land and Freedom Army soldiers, showing their long, matted hair, were widely disseminated, including in the Rasta organ African Opinion. Jamaicans had been similarly oppressed by colonialism, from the time that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the island in 1494 until independence in 1962. Their new public identification with African origins alarmed the authorities. The Rastas adopted the dramatic African hairstyle as a badge of rebellion. In Jamaica at the time, as elsewhere, many parents of African descent admonished their children to deemphasize their ethnicity by straightening or otherwise processing their hair. Some youngsters who failed to do so were denounced by their parents as "natty head pickney." Mulatto children were considered fortunate if they were born with straight sometimes actually called "good" hair. Because of the uneasiness it inspired in political opponents, their hairstyle was named dread- (for "fear") locks. After the Rastas adopted dreadlocks as an official symbol of political solidarity, a new term entered the patois of the resistance "Natty Dread."

As usual, the symbolic power of hair was recognized by both its wearers and their enemies. In Jamaica in the late 1960s, when the police arrested Rastafarians, they symbolically tamed them by snipping off their wild hair. Although hoodlums and others also adopted the style, blurring the symbol's political and religious significance, the popularity of dreadlocks continued to rise. The style became associated with the burgeoning black-consciousness movement of the 1970s. But it was widely recognized and accepted only after it was adopted by reggae musicians such as Bob Marley. By the early seventies, some believers were dubbing those who did not wear the style "baldheads." In time the term referred to any nonbeliever who rejected the teachings of Ras Tafari.

Like most religious ideas, the Rastafarian emphasis on long hair is subject to individual interpretation. In the early 1980s, David Hinds, head of Britain's pioneer reggae band Steel Pulse, wore a bowler hat onstage. When his hair began to acquire the shape of his headgear, he decided to grow it straight up. In time the trunk of hair rising up from his scalp sprouted dreadlocks around its base like roots. This tonsorial topiary attracted a lot of attention, but Hinds insisted that it was not merely a publicity gimmick. "My hair," he said, "is an expression of my devotion to the Rastafarian faith. . . . My hair is religious, cultural, not fashionable."

Soon after they were popularized by reggae musicians, dreadlocks were no longer limited to Rastas or even to blacks. Whites in the public eye began to adopt the style. In 1982 the trendy London salon Antenna announced the introduction of "bobtails, or white dreadlocks." Boy George of the band Culture Club wore a version of dreadlocks for a while. In the early 1980s, he explained to a reporter from a music magazine why he wore the discordant combination of Rastafarian hair and a Star of David. "I'm not at all religious," he said; "I think the dreadlocks look good and the star is a nice symbol. . . . Basically, I wear it to annoy people." Boy George certainly annoyed some people, more for his androgyny than for his hairstyle, but he also influenced people.

For the bandwagon followers as for the Jamaicans, there was also a practical aspect to the hairdo. As the owner of Antenna proclaimed, "Now the taboo of not combing one's hair and washing it every other day has been thrown strongly out of the window." Nowadays dreadlocks are relatively common among both women and men of African descent, and not a rare sight among white men and women in various countries far from the style's origins.

The Rastafarians were not the only ones to react against the practice of torturously disguising one's natural curls. In Alex Haley's "autobiography" of him, Malcolm X told the story of a haircut that he later regarded as a milestone in his life. It took place years before he became a Muslim and acquired the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. In Boston in the early 1940s, fresh from Omaha, Nebraska, he was still known as Malcolm Little. After arranging for him to be fitted for a zoot suit, a friend gave young Malcolm his first "conk."

© 2004 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Michael Sims has written about science and culture for newspapers and radio, and for magazines ranging from American Archaeology to Creative Loafing. He is also the author of Darwin's Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts and Adam's Nave.