“Don’t haffi dread to be Rasta…” Morgan Heritage

photo courtesy of mundorasta.net

If you have been reading this blog since Black History Month, you’ve probably already gathered that I’ve done an ode to Black men. I love them and wouldn’t want to live without them; impeccable-ness starts with he who wears the crown…of HAIR!

If you’ve learned anything from my blog it’s that I will always have a deep appreciation and affinity for Black men like Mr. Elston Fitzgerald, my high school band teacher. Beyond teaching me the elements of music and musicality, Mr. Fitzgerald taught me about words, language, life and image. He was and still is a commanding figure: tall, dark-complexioned, robust, usually bearded, and wears a mane of a naturally curly Afro. His voice, a deep resounding beauty. I remember once, he gave my peers and I a lesson on beards, Black men, and perception. He taught us that Black men had been historically told to keep their faces clean-shaven so as to look less threatening and more acceptable; it was to make them appear as boys even though they were men capable of deciding what looks they felt were acceptable to them.

Photo courtesy of The Mosque Cares

This post is for Mr. Fitzgerald. It’s also for all of the Muslim men like Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and the other brothers in the communities in which I grew up who wore their beards like they wore their kufis and practiced their deen. This post is for every man that ever stood out because of his beautiful locs of hair. It’s for the Rastas with locs coiffed and cascading, and men like Andre “3000” Benjamin, Nasir Jones  and Wood Harris sporting low-cuts and side parts and other versatile styles.  It’s for the wet-and-wavy, water-and-grease-hair having brothers. This post is for the ancient hair that remains on the lifeless pharaohs, yet preserved for the Afterlife of eternity and to deepen the lessons of today. It’s for Aboriginal blonde peculiarity. And, it’s for the cornrows and the hair that used to be but male-patterned baldness has borrowed it for good leaving behind variant, shining, chocolate mounds .

Lastly, in remembrance of the 49th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, formerly known as “Detroit Red” because of the sandy red hair that made him stand out, this post is for him. As if history hasn’t already proven he was a special gift among us, perhaps his hair was indeed the sign.

Hair.

It’s a free-flowing conversation piece of puffy, sleek, and tentacled meandering thoughts; and, the manifestation of life’s coarse kinky-ness that smoothly intersects at the right juncture. It’s the crowning glory of identity and movement colliding over shoulders and/or knotty beards where jaw lines rendezvous with side burns, bridged by a mustache’s canopy; and, from underneath flow the lyrics of life and love sounds, tender and masculine, raw and un-cut, powerful and revolutionary. These crowns accentuate beautiful eyes and beautiful lips. They highlight skin tones and frame the face’s structure like they accessorize behavior punctuated with legato and staccato movements and rhythms worn by Rastas like Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley…pregnant with the will of Jah and the love for the people.

Hair…Everlasting.