Am I Not My Hair?

Essentially a religious symbol then a political statement and now a fashion trend, dreadlocks have experienced a revival on urban streets. From Brixton to Birmingham, ‘locking’ shops are springing up all over the country to cater for the growing demand of black men and women wanting to go natural. Is this a sign of a new black consciousness or a passing trend? Sylvia Arthur finds out.

Frances Hall always wanted to grow dreads. She liked the look of them and admired women like Lauryn Hill and India. Arie but was afraid of the impact having locs would have on her career. As an aspiring television news journalist she feared wearing dreads would play up to a stereotype and be detrimental to her progress. “I didn’t want to be seen as an angry black woman with a chip on my shoulder,” she says. “I wanted to be taken seriously.”

But having abandoned the extensions and chemical straighteners in favour of locs two years ago she says she’s never been happier and wishes she’d made the change years ago. “I feel liberated now,” Hall says. “The time was right. Everyone has locs now and it’s no big deal. It’s like wearing a hijab (Muslim headscarf). With locs everyone knows what you’re about.”

Like the Afro in the sixties, the connotations surrounding dreadlocks are deep-rooted and contentious. Though widely associated with the Rastafarian religion, as popularised by the late Reggae legend Bob Marley and iconic of a black consciousness movement, dreadlocks have become both a style of convenience and a symbol of self-pride for a generation of men and women who were born well after the cultural revolutions of the 60's and 70's.

Tosin Talabi, owner of Eftal Natural Hair in Tottenham, North London has seen a sharp rise in business over the last two years. When she opened her first shop in the predominantly black area of West Green Road in 2002 she was serving a small but loyal customer base. Now, having moved to bigger premises she’s averaging about three times as many clients as before as more people aspire to the versatility of dreadlocks.

“I don’t think wearing your hair in dreads has anything to do with your religious or political beliefs these days,” says Stacey Atkins, who’s been growing her hair in locs for the past ten years. “Britain is the most multicultural society in Europe so the struggle isn’t the same as in the 60’s and 70’s. Some people just like the easy upkeep and length. It’s as simple as that.”

Though dreadlocks have become more acceptable over the years some Rastafarians are angry at what they see as the secularisation of their religion.

This is an edited extract.
© Sylvia Arthur, 2004 & 2006.

Africa Plays On... And why you should be listening

Africa Plays On… was originally released to commemorate Africa’s participation in the 2006 World Cup but the songs on this disc will far outlive the Summer of ‘06. The album’s standout cuts are the opener Please Don’t Stop, a sublime collaboration between US R&B singer John Legend and Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona and the brilliantly epic 2000 Blacks Got To Be Free by Roy Ayers and Fela Kuti. Wahala Project’s Wahala, a groovy slice of Afro-funk also rates an honourable mention. The ubiquitous Akon makes an understated appearance on Amadou and Mariam’s Coulibaly while reggae fans can choose between Alpha Blondy’s rootsy Cocody Rock or Waldemar Bastos’ dancehall-tinged Pitanga Madurinha II. Man of the Moment K’naan shines on Ba Sissoko’s Silani and Osibisa show they haven’t lost any of their old sparkle on Watusi.

Africa Plays On… is an excellent introduction to the eclectic sounds and talents of a diverse continent. For neophytes it serves as a delectable taster of what Africa has to offer and perfectly enunciates how African music could compete in the international mainstream. Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of the many languages on this disc. The beauty of this compilation is that the truly universal rhythms transcend linguistic boundaries, taking the listener on a compelling journey through a musical soundscape.
A true aural delight! SA.

Shoot The Messenger: The Morning after the Night Before

I felt compelled against my better judgement to stay up last night and watch Shoot The Messenger (BBC2, 9pm, Wed, 30/08/06), having been told by many friends that this was definitely watercooler TV. It’s not good to go to bed with an angry mind and I knew that like Channel 4’s The Great British Black Invasion this had the potential to rile me. And indeed it did.

Shoot The Messenger was train crash TV, an awkward juxtaposition of every stereotype that currently exists about black boys and men. Every character was a conflicted tragedy and every tragic character was black. In the first thirty minutes it became clear that the sole objective of the film was simply to see how many stereotypes can be easily crammed in to 90 minutes. And there were enough of them to go round:

The uneducated black boy
The undisciplined black boy
Black self-loathing
Black-on-black crime
The black man in prison
The black man in a mental health institution
The homeless black man
The tormented black man

The storyline was inconsistent and weak and based on a series of unconnected and flimsy premises. The relationships betweens the main characters were undeveloped and unbelievable. Why would someone like Heather or indeed any sane intelligent black woman go out with someone like Joe, who openly declares that he hates black people? Why wasn’t she shocked when she heard his declaration? Why would Joe himself want to go out with a black woman? What well-to- do black parent would see their child out on the streets, especially parents like Joe’s?

From beginning to end Shoot The Messenger careered from one inexplicable extreme to the next and was littered with gaping holes that left many unanswered questions:

Why did Germal, the teenage tearaway, go mad? While Joe’s descent into mental illness was understandable, if not questionable, Germal’s stay in a mental health institution was simply a gratuitous twist in an already hackneyed plot that saw another black male character end up in prison for black-on-black murder. Are we forced to assume that insanity or incarceration or both are an inevitable consequence of being black?

Where were Germal’s parents? Though his mother was twice alluded to again the viewer is left to assume that he is yet another fatherless product of a single mother and a victim of fate.

Why did the only ‘normal’ character, Joe’s girlfriend Heather have to have issues? And a weave? This isn’t the ‘60’s. Not every black hairstyle is a political statement. But of course there had to be a deep-rooted reason why she preferred human hair out of a bag to the natural hair on her head. And then the came the sob story … “When I was younger I was lined up with my sisters and put to the back of the line because I was dark and ugly.”

Just when you thought Shoot The Messenger was about to redeem itself, when the lead character Joe implored his girlfriend Heather to, “Sort out the mess on your head and I’ll sort out the mess in mine” you were left disappointed when the film once again descended in to a hyper-critical introspective muddle. While the film’s opening line has been much maligned - “Everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person” – by far the most shocking and damaging dialogue came when Joe concluded that perhaps the reason why black people are obsessed with slavery is because “we were actually good at it. We were productive then.” In an interview in this week’s New Nation newspaper the film’s writer Sharon Foster says black people can’t be afraid to tell the truth. What possible truth can be derived from that statement?

If there was anything good to be taken from this film it was that the directing was slick and the acting was brilliant but that was never in question.

In the end I realised that there was really nothing in this film to get angry about. Shoot The Messenger was supposed to be clever and ironic. Instead it was tacky and submissive. Last night I went to bed content in the knowledge that thankfully I personally don’t know any of the characters portrayed in the film (and no, I don’t live in some backwater in the country). While some may question the truth of this statement I’d prefer instead to question the kind of society that has us believing that every black woman under 30 is an unemployed single mother with four children by four different fathers who will either end up in prison or in the mental health system. And it was then that I realised that I must take this film for what it was – an exaggerated work of fiction. SA.