BBC World Histories - 08.2019 - 09.2019

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CULTURE The Conversation

Matt Elton: Your new book covers a fascinating range of

subjects. How would you describe it?

Emma Dabiri: Ostensibly, it’s about black, Afro-textured hair

and its history, politics and significance – but really it’s about

a lot more than that. One of my friends described it as a kind of

Trojan horse: something that presents itself as being about one

thing, but which also kind of smuggles in a lot of other ideas.

What’s interesting about your book is that it considers hair

as an artefact. You talk about societies in Africa, for instance,

that use complex non-verbal languages including hairstyling.

In what ways is it useful to view hair through this lens?

The texture of African hair means it’s incredibly versatile and

lends itself to being shaped in a huge range of ways. Because

this innate material was part of people’s lives and reality,

cultures developed to suit that reality – and because this hair

can do so much, a strong and lively hair culture emerged.

Many of the cultures I explore in the book would tradition-

ally be described as ‘oral’. There’s often an assumption that,

when you speak of orality, you’re talking only about the verbal

• but in most of those societies there would also have been
  a plethora of other sorts of language. For instance, Yoruba
  culture [of west Africa] uses the batá drum to
  mimic the tonality of the spoken language. And
  there are many visual languages, too, of which
  hair and hairstyling would have been a part.

You mention Yoruba culture. Does its folklore

specifically reference hair?

There’s a genre in Yoruba called oriki,

of which there are many different

types, but the term can essentially be

translated as ‘praise poems’. When

a person is born, traditionally they

would have their own oriki, which

is a long name or song that reflects

the conditions of their birth, their

family background, their parents’

aspirations for them, and so on.

I looked at oriki of the orisha – Yoruba deities who act as

intermediaries between the Supreme Being and humans.

There’s a very powerful orisha, known as Oshun, who is the

deity of the river and fresh water, luxury and pleasure,

sexuality and fertility, and beauty and love. Her oriki talk

about her being the primary hairdresser in Yoruba culture.

Because she’s such an important figure, it makes sense that

a lot of the creativity, innovation and beauty that comes from

hairstyling can be associated with her.

One of the big ideas you explore in your book is the way

in which European settlers, when they first came to Africa,

admired the cultures they found there – a reaction very

different from that of later invaders and settlers.

There are accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries in which

Portuguese and Dutch observers are staggered by the size and

organisation of some of the cities they saw. Even in the early to

mid-19th century, when the British ventured into the interior

of Nigeria, they described how easy the journey was and how

orderly and well-functioning the place was.

For example, when [Scottish explorer] Hugh Clapperton

travelled in the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, in what’s now

Nigeria, in the 1820s, his party travelled with

ease and safety. He commended “regular

government which could not have been supposed

to exist amongst a people hitherto considered

barbarians”. They were travelling through parts

of the continent now seen today as dangerous

and lawless. Yet in that period, when Africa was

supposedly even more underdeveloped,

things functioned a lot better than today.

And they often explicitly mentioned

different hairstyles they saw on these

journeys, didn’t they?

Yes. A lot of early western observers

were struck by the ornate hair-

styling culture and the diversity

and creativity of hairstyles, because

“A lot of early western

observers in Africa were

struck by the diversity and

creativity of hairstyles”

ALAMY

A hairdresser at work in

Sierra Leone. In some west

African cultures, hair and

hairstyling formed part of

visual languages

ИЗП

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