Crowning Glory – Part One – a brief note on the history of African hair

Hair has been a unavoidably dominant feature of African art and culture since time immemorial. Hairstyles have been coiffured as aesthetic expressions much like other temporary adornments such as body paint, which bear a sharp contrast to permanent expressions such as scarification or skull elongation that was practised by the Mangbetu people of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo.


Typically, in many communities, far beyond a tool for an individual’s expression of self, symbolic and distinctive hairstyles were also used to reflect specific characteristics such as age, sex, social and religious status. Hair in these contexts is elaborately explored within specific communities sparsed across the African continent in a fascinating book whose title is derived from an exhibition, Hair in African Art and Culture (available from Amazon) in the Museum for African Art in New York City. This beautiful and enriching, glossy, photo-essay coffee table book successfully encapsulates the rich variety of hair arrangements in both men and women, boys and girls, that have had a central place in African life and art. The blurry lines and intimate entwinement of life and art are presented by photography and sculpture and elaborated with text, including anthropological accounts.




It is a fascinating read - Within various groups spanning the African continent, hairstyles were significant as they were used to mark and express together with meaningful cries or ululation significant life-changing events such as mourning or initiations. Hair had a voice and the eyes in the community “heard” the message of the wearer. For instance, in women thick long tresses symbolised fertility and strength; disheveled hair a state of disharmony such as a bereavement; and plaited hair a commitment to social order. Interestingly, the fact that hair was entrusted to another person, usually of the same sex, created and flourished a social bond between the stylist and the wearer. Something that undoubtedly carries on today.




Hair was also used to breath life into masks, that were used in ritual. The same sacrity was given to hair used in juju (i.e. charms) that could potentially be used to harm or protect the owner. Consequently, hair was disposed of with great care.


My next post will be on the somewhat contentious subject of contemporary African hair.

Interruption of the Radio Silence with Old Wise Words

I was recently excitedly reacquainted with a book I had when I was in primary school aged 10: Swahili Sayings from Zanzibar by S.S. Farsi. I’ve always been intrigued by the use of methali (the Swahili word for proverbs) as well as metaphors as they add flavour to speech. They stir up the creative mind, reminiscent of pidgin or sheng, whose words or phrases, when traced back to the root, usually reveal a rather clever deduction.

In the bilingual preface, Farsi acknowledges the need for recording of customs and traditions before they are forgotten.

Proverbs are very useful for inculcating moral lessons…They are indeed disappearing very quickly. Until recently, children were not allowed out-of-doors after sunset…For the period between sunset and bedtime they sat indoors and enjoyed listening to the old women who told them riddles and fairy stories. These stories always had a moral and educational purpose.

As I flipped through this small but significant treasure, a methali caught my eye:

Kimya kingi kina mshindo mkuu.
A long silence is followed by a mighty noise.

Coincidence or prophetic?
We shall soon find out.

Fashionable Flair

This post marks the first of what I hope will culminate in a series that portrays the intriguing influences from our ancestors and how they have contributed, with or without our knowledge, to shape us “modern” folk.




It invariably grates me when certain members of society judge others as “backward”, "uncivilised" or “undeveloped” for prevailing in their traditional ways of life. Interestingly, Victorian (late 19th to early 20th century) women’s fashion, when Britain was a colonial power, incorporated bustles to their dresses in order to create the illusion of a large derriere, bears an undoubtedly striking resemblance to this boy's elaborate attire in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia.

Curious, isn’t it?

If my high-school-cum-crash-course-French is accurate, my source for the image on the left suggested that this boy and other youngsters had adorned themselves in body paint and transformed themselves into works of art that were reminiscent of Picasso or Paul Klee. Once again, I’d like to suggest the contrary - it is their work that is reminiscent of African art. It is well known that Picasso got his inspiration from African art forms, notably masks. I rest my case.

I'm trying to put up less garrulous posts. Not a bad start, huh.

Image 1: Boy in Omo Valley, from Le Figaro Magazine; Image 2: Victorian woman, from Living History

South Africa.::Molora::.On Hope

This is by no means a political blog. However, in discussing the arts, politics is bound to emerge as the two are sometimes intimately entwined. As I have mentioned before, the arts are a uniquely powerful tool to voice oppression. So too are the arts a useful means to explore change and its impact. Such as the transition of a nation.

I had intended for this post to coincide with South African Freedom Day. In my defence, however, the issues it raises will surely be relevant at the forthcoming annual celebration of the official release of South Africa from the chains of apartheid – the day that led to Nelson “Madiba” Mandela to become the first black president of the Rainbow Nation.


The [Truth and Reconciliation] Commission had been founded in the belief that the truth was the only means by which the people of South Africa could come to a common understanding of their past, and that this understanding was necessary if the country was to forge a new national identity in the future.
Excerpt from: The Truth Commission by Jillian Edelstein - published in Granta 66, Summer 1999.


Molora, a Sesotho word that translates to ash (thanks OnSesotho), is a raw, intense and captivating play, written and directed by Yael Farber. If you plan on seeing this play, be warned that this post contains a spoiler – all is revealed.

Farber cleverly adapted and juxtapositioned the Greek tragedy about mother and daughter, Elektra and Klytemnestra, which is part of the violent cycle of the Oresteia Trilogy and effectively correlated it with South Africa’s own relatively recent tragedy. Apartheid.

Klytemnestra (Dorothy Ann Gould), the audacious, forceful and seemingly heartless mother portrayed the white South African institution, while her daughter, the gentle yet strong, vulnerable yet courageous and unyielding Elektra (Jabulile Tshabalala), portrayed black South Africans with all heart and soul. The face-twisting pain and oppression that Elektra was subjugated to and evidently carried with her was conveyed time and time and time again.

Although I am not one for this type of melodramatic acting, the talented actors conveyed raw emotion with much candor and intensity, drawing the audience not only into their minds, but more importantly into their hearts. The symbolism throughout the play cleverly transcended multiple layers. A simple mound of sand took centre stage, which the audience knew to be the grave of her father, Agamemnon, Elektra’s husband, who was murdered in cold blood, by his own wife. The white, gumboot-wearing mother Klytemnestra had a bloodstained face and clothes. In addition, the appropriation of well known quotes that pervaded many layers were also used to depict the incredibly challenging topics of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the much needed healing of the South African people.

What effortlessly remains with me, a true sign of the successful conveyance of her fight for survival, include the re-enactments at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Klytemnestra’s ruthless torturing of her daughter Elektra by immersing her head in water and holding it down – the “wet bag” technique of the apartheid era. Or when Klytemnestra forceably seals a plastic bag over Elektra’s head as Elektra lies face down with her mother Klytemnestra sitting on her bottom, rendering her helpless and at her mercy. Or when Klytemnestra burns Elektra with her lit cigarette. On each occasion, moments before Elektra gasped loudly as she painstakingly inhaled, desperately sucking in precious oxygen into her deprived lungs, some of the audience, myself included, fidgeted in our seats; the urgency palpable as tens of seconds that felt like minutes ticked, dictating raised heartbeats and miniature beads of sweat collecting on our brows as we quietly watched the ruthless and inhumane treatment Elektra suffered.

Although none of this was news to us, it was still shocking. It was as if we had been sucked into an unrelenting black hole and were falling to infinity as we helplessly watched Elektra suffer, knowing that the one woman’s pain that we felt and witnessed was only multiplied not-so-long-ago by a nation of millions. Or perhaps it was as if we had been grabbed by the hand by an unseen, unmatched force beneath us and pulled into a bottomless unillumined body of water. And when we came up for breath and eventually crawled out, there was no denying that we had been immersed as we were now dripping wet. Regrettably, we could not be reassured that this was just a play. For they were not just actors and what they conveyed was not based on fiction. I imagined that Elektra really had lived the pain. Knowing that one woman’s pain was so raw and so palpable left me overwhelmed, unable to imagine the pain of an entire nation.

At the core of the play was the message/question: is revenge the only and natural response? In other words, is forgiveness possible?

Once Elektra and her brother Orestes are re-united, Elektra voices her simple but heartfelt monologue, quoting Shakespeare:


If you prick us do we not bleed?
If you tickle us do we not laugh?
If you poison us do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?


Throughout the play, the Xhosa women and one man of the Ngqoko Cultural Group mainly stood at the sidelines of the set, creating the ritualistic ambience through their split tone harmonies and instruments that include a milking drum and calabash and bow. Later, as grief consumes the wailing Elektra, she lies across the group of the kneeling Xhosa women who lovingly embrace her and envelope her, caressing her body that emanates with raw and tender grief from every pore, singing to her to give her spiritual healing through touch and song – insinuating this is the only way to heal the grief, the anger and the deep-seated desire for revenge. And later, brother and sister, Elektra and Orestes, unlike in the storyline of the Greek myth, spare their mother’s life.

The message is clear: revenge will not undo any of the wrongs inflicted upon them but only cause more grief.

The play ends with a silent yet incredibly powerful message - falling ash onto the shoulders of the silent, still and onward-looking cast. The ash, a tribute to the uncountable victims of the apartheid era, as a new South Africa emerges.

But the stars of the evening, in my opinion were the women of the Ngqoko Cultural Group. Their split tone guttural singing was not only captivating and haunting, but like none other I have ever heard. At first I was perplexed at their lack of eye contact with the audience, including during the bows at the end of the play. As I walked towards the tube station minutes later, our paths crossed. Star struck and unconcealingly impressed by these women, I approached them to thank them and their translator, the man of the group, willingly obliged. It instantly struck me that the reason they did not interact with the audience in their body language was simply because they were not actors. They were authentic Xhosa singers, their faces unwashed and still adorned in bodypaint and dressed in the same clothes they had worn on stage. That evening, they had simply done what they usually did. The only difference being that a random audience in a basement theatre in central London had watched them. I felt incredibly humbled by these women and grateful to have been a witness and to have been immersed in their enchanting primordial, ancestral sounds.

For a taste of Molora click here.
Molora is currently on tour in Europe and USA.

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (1913 to 2008) – A Tribute

"Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge...What presides over the poem is not the most lucid intelligence, the sharpest sensibility or the subtlest feelings, but experience as a whole.”

(via A Poetics of Anticolonialism)

Photo from AP

The much loved and revered poet, author and politician Aimé Césaire was laid to rest in Martinique in a state funeral yesterday. Arguably mostly renowned for spear-heading the Pan-African and anti-colonial movement by being part of the trio that coined the concept and movement “negritude” (defined as the affirmation that one is black and proud of it) while studying and living in Paris in the 1930s, with his friends Léon Damas (from French Guiana) and Léopold Senghor (the then future president of Senegal) in their joint university publication L’etudiant Noir (The Black Student), a literary review whose goal was to unite students of the Diaspora – from Africa and the West Indies.

In one of his most renowned works, a book-long poem titled Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1947) (Notebook of a return to my native land), Césaire embraced and celebrated the ancestral homelands of Africa and the Caribbean.

ma negritude n’est pas une pierre, sa surdite ruee contre
la clameur du jour
ma negritude n’est pas une taie d’eau morte sur l’il
mort de la terre
ma negritude n’est ni une tour ni une cathedrale
elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol
elle plonge dans la chair ardente du ciel
elle troue l’accablement opaque de sa droite patience.

my Negritude is not a stone, its deafness dashed against
the clamor of the day
my Negritude is not an opaque spot of dead water
on the dead eye of the earth
my Negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky
it pierces opaque prostration with its upright patience

(via A Slant Truth)

Césaire's unapologetic attack on Eurocentric hegemony and notions of restoring African identity was later elaborated on in Discours sur le Colonialisme (1955) (Discourse on Colonialism), a manifesto which is said to have influenced one of his equally influential students, Frantz Fanon in his revolutionary pontification “Black Skin, White Masks” (1967), which examines the psychological, cultural and social damage inflicted by colonialism. A book on Césaire's collected works is available here.

Excerpt from The Independent orbituary -

The three young men [Césaire, Damas and Senghor] drew inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance's efforts to promote the richness of African cultural identity and particularly opposed French assimilationist policies.
During these years Césaire began to develop the ideas for his most famous poem, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; translated as Return to My Native Land, 1969), the work in which he coined the term "négritude". The surrealist André Breton, who became a good friend of Césaire's after a 1942 visit to Martinique and who helped to introduce his work to Parisian literary circles, called the Cahier "the greatest lyric monument of this time".

Drawing on surrealist techniques, the poem took its inspiration from the Martinican landscape and Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the first phase of the Haitian Revolution, whose biography Césaire would later write (Toussaint Louverture: la révolution française et le problème colonial, published 1960). It asserted a claim to Afro-Caribbean ownership of the archipelago, "which is one of the two sides of the incandescence through which the equator walks its tightrope to Africa".

The poem explores the distinctiveness of black cultural identity in a historically grounded manner that prefigures the black consciousness movements of the 1960s, the decade when it became popular in the English-speaking world, thanks to a Penguin translation. Stylistically varied, it moves between impassioned prose outbursts against injustice and a more lyrical mode that celebrates black ancestry.


A noteworthy article on Césaire, his life and his works is published in LIP magazine. Other tributes but to name a few, include Antilles and Global Voices.

Photos published in Le Figaro (via Antilles)


Perhaps the most disconcerting thought upon reflecting on Césaire's works is how relevant they remain today in a post-colonial world.


- Repos dans la paix -

Pangea – One Big Happy Global Community

I am enthused by the idea of building bridges between distinct entities, be they people, places or disciplines. Film maker and creative visionary Jehane Noujaim (of Control Room fame) presented her wish at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference back in 2006 – her vivid and captivating vision of a day the world would unite through the power of film. Jehane Noujaim took the audience into her mind as she unveiled her perfectly pitched concept of people telling their stories at an allocated, synchronised time, to an audience that would span the globe. And won the TED Prize. It was not a far-fetched idea but captivating, inspirational and pragmatic - expanding people’s minds by allowing them to experience the world of “the other” from their own locality; travelling in mind as opposed to in body, uniting the world in a unique event where people will share the experience of watching and undergoing a transformation elicited by powerful stories through powerful imagery. The event to be held on 10th May 2008 is befittingly called Pangea Day, the name inspired by Wegener’s convincing theory of planet earths existence as a supercontinent prior to detachment into the continents we know today.

When I allow myself to dive into and indulge in the concept of global unity, I am aware that there is clearly an aspect of me that is running away with fantasy. More so as we are living in an age where we talk in polarised terms and convene around coffee tables, speculating on the imminent and inevitable crumbling of the global power, as a dragon (simultaneously?) rises, spanning her wings across the globe to be the next world dominator. However, if I may stay in fantasyland for a moment yet, as I do quite like it here, thinking of planet earth’s continents as a single, conglomerated land mass as it arguably was about 250 million years ago, illuminated for me how this physicality can radically alter how we as individuals perceive and relate to the world. How our inhabitance of a giant land mass could cognitively breed unity amongst us, the inhabitants - the human race – one people on earth, regardless of our physical appearance, culture or heritage purely based on our perceived closer proximity to each other. Regretably, I am falling back from the clouds as I start to recount in my mind the number of inter-continental conflicts that are still fresh in my mind, having occurred during my own life-time….

Back to reality now, it also got me thinking about my Africanness, my Kenyanness and whatever-else-I-may-identify-with-ness. Despite Africa’s vastness and incredibly exhilirating and mind-blowing diversity, what is it that makes me feel connected to my fellow Africans at large? Turning a misconception that I see represented in the media on its head, I am now pondering on if there is a possibility that at a subconscious level, I have absorbed the oh-so-infuriating message that Africa is not a giant? What about the convenient reference to sub-Saharan Africa that excludes the Sahel (for example in terms of statistics) that we have now internalised that has only widened an already palpable divide. This subject matter in itself deserves a separate post.

I suspect that there is an ounce of truth in the notion that Africa’s existence as a land mass breeds unity to those who inhabit her undulating, diverse terrain. No argument wins by presenting a mono-variable and therefore there are sure to be other factors at play here, such as the marginalisation of a people that is inexorably embedded in our history and continues to be propagated in the current global climate with issues such as unjust global trading policies. However, thinking of the land mass that is the continent of Africa, there is a level of intimacy that we share by virtue of our proximity to each other that is embodied in the ease of access that we have to one another, albeit presuming ease of ability to traverse the artificial borders that were carved out in Europe without our knowledge. What I am saying is that our proximity to each other by default makes us feel we belong to each other. A macro community, in other words. This bears great similarity to the concept in economics that a single currency makes people feel united as it simplifies travelling and inter-country relations, therefore uniting neighbouring nations. Basically, it is all in the mind. Although I am not the expert, I daresay that this is already the case in Europe and Central Africa. Looking around me, in the UK, a small island in Northwestern Europe, it is fascinating to see how the UK plays a delicate dance with her identity; with one foot in continental Europe and the other firmly rooted in her autonomy and Britishness. After all, unlike Ireland, the rest of the UK clings onto the sterling, nose turned upwards snubbing the Euro.

Back to Africa – ironically, it is easier and cheaper to fly across the Mediterranean to Europe as opposed to travelling within Africa. Explicably due to the economic theory of demand and supply (although there are promising signs that this is changing, big up KQ). Despite this, our connection to each other remains steadfast. Thinking back to the possibilities of interwoven variables that connect us, all playing a part to nurture our sense of unity, it becomes apparent to me that perhaps another leaf to the argument is that, it may be partly because our identity is physically worn and therefore openly viewed by others (which can be postulated for other regions of the world of course). A person with whom I have no affiliation can look at me from a distance and have full knowledge of my ancestral home, without any verbal exchange. The eyes speak to the onlooker. This reminds me of the brief but appreciated act of exchanging eye contact or a subtle knod, that goes unnoticed to those momentarily sharing the same space when my path has fleetingly crossed with another person of African origin either by birth or ancestry, in a town that had a white majority. Indeed, the solidarity of minorities.

I like the word solidarity. Perhaps yet another unifying factor is our yearning to stand together, in our own defence after witnessing the seemingly tireless mis-representation of our continent as a dark, disease-ridden and war-torn hell hole. In which case, the very misrepresentation that attempts to deny us of our expansive identity also plays a part in uniting us? African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), an organisation that I have a lot of time for, formulated a policy document on what the Diaspora can do to challenge media misrepresentation of Africa.

The question of a united world remains, sitting heavily on my shoulders. Perhaps it is a long way ahead yet, however, we can only but start with baby steps by opening our hearts and listening to each other. Join me on Pangea Day around the world. Surely I can still dream, can’t I?

Update: If you can’t be bothered to read the entire schpill, just read this –

My brain has been ticking along since I put up this post resulting in a eureka moment, a connection of neuronal networks, in the realisation that what I spent a number of paragraphs mulling over as inspired by the concept of the earth as pangea may be summarised thus: there are a myriad of interwoven agents at play to form a complex multidimensional picture that will inarguably influence our definition of the term “community”. These include geographical boundaries (aha! the connection to pangea), shared interests (for example activism), age groups, gender, socio-economic and political factors. This list could potentially carry on to infinity as we identify the plethora of micro and macro communities that exist based on our differences or associations. I guess you now either (a) get the drift of my ramblings or (b) have spotted I never read a social science. Or both. Don’t you just love it when things suddenly arrange themselves into nice, little, tidy packages to calm an overwhelmed mind?

More Time

Linton Kwesi Johnson accurately captures my sentiments with regards to my recent justifiable hiatus...

(hint: if you are a patois virgin, try miming or reading out loud - it really works!)


wi mawchin out di ole towards di new centri
arm wid di new technalagy
wi gettin more an more producktivity
some seh tings lookin-up fi prasperity
but if evrywan goin get a share dis time
ole mentality mus get lef behine

wi want di shawtah workin day
gi wi di shawtah workin week
langah holiday
wi need decent pay

more time fi leasha
more time fi pleasha
more time fi edificaeshun
more time fi reckreashun
more time fi contemplate
more time fi ruminate
more time
wi need
more
time
gi wi more time

a full time dem abalish unemployment
an revahlushanise laybah deployment
a full time dem banish ovahtime
mek evrybady get a wok dis time
wi need a highah quality a livity
wi need it now an fi evrybady
wi need di shawtah workin year
gi wi di shawtah workin life
more time fi di huzban
more time fi di wife
more time fi di children
more time fi wi fren dem
more time fi meditate
more time fi create
more time fi livin
more time fi life
more time
wi need more time
gi wi more time

Update: Even better to hear it from the man himself