Rastaman deh pon top as usual. Rasta. Dread. Natty. People with locks been called so many things, some of them not very nice, some of them completely false. So why people nowadays getting up and saying they want locks for style? Since when dreadlocks stop being dread and start being high fashion? Is something I have to look into since, after all, I want locks too.

My most profound experience with Rastafari came about as most of my profound experiences do: through a book. This one was in my school text, an excerpt from Rastafari: A Universal Philosophy in the Third Millenium. It’s the chapter where Mutabaruka reflects on Rasta from Experience. Mutabaruka used to be a very strong cultural icon, for the Rasta as well as the everyday Jamaican. I say used to be, because to my thinking he’s out of shape. No self-respecting orator can turn to nighttime gossip shows and still hope to be taken seriously, but I digress.

Muta talks at length about the history and origins of Rasta, from Back ‘o Wall days, mentioning Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari tenets. He looks at the different sects of Rasta, the different beliefs; he scorns the ‘town’ Rasta, who have to back up their ideas with Judaeo-Christian teachings, and reveres the Rasta in the hill, for whom Rastafari is not a bible-ting, because him don’t need to validate his beliefs. In the town, people called on the Rasta to validate himself constantly. Not combing the hair was foreign; believing that God used to be a man was heretic; smoking ganja was borderline illegal (and is now). Xenophobia is as old as time.

The fear of the locks was dreadful, dreadlocks. -Mutabaruka, Rasta from Experience

So this is where Mutabaruka says Rasta is coming from. This is the history of ‘dreadful locks’ and like he says you used to find Rastas in some weird places just because they looking different. So what would Muta say now? Rastas, they everywhere. In your schools, in your churches, in your offices and on the streets. But the attitude towards locks and Rasta still so different even here, where Rasta born and grow. In Mobay, people still don’t like them much. You mostly find locks on the labourers, the skilled workers and not so much the professionals. The older folks look down on locks, even the ones for style, and most of the middle generation not comfortable with it, either. The distrust and bigotry is still there in a big way.

Then take Kingston, the cradle of Rasta. They come a long way there, people with locks strolling up and down the university campus like ants on sugar. Doctors have locks, lawyers have locks, lecturers have locks. Is not just the artistes and the liberals, the button-up types adopting the style too. Is not just for the rebels, the khaki soldiers and the Che Guevaras among us anymore. But then Kingston is usually the trendsetter, especially for we here in Mobay and in no time, you see we stop turn up we nose at the Rastaman. But no matter where you go in Jamaica, Babylon still running them down for the herb.

To the rest of the world, Rasta is Bob Marley, is reggae music, is being high. Locks is not so much style as lifestyle and, for the few that adopt it, identification with a persecuted subculture. On the international scale, locks are still sneered at and scorned. It untidy, it nasty, it don’t look neat. You don’t see business professionals and academics with locks; you see entertainers and athletes and artists. No 9-5’ers here, locks stuck with the liberals and the rebels. But Rasta is not reggae music and Bob Marley and locks. How the old song go?

You don’t haffi dread fi be Rasta

And locks is not synonymous with being high and worshipping the Marleys. Sufi monks have a choice between shaving the head and growing the hair as dreadlocks; both styles represent a disregard for the physical body in the search for spiritual enlightenment. Rastaman have him reasons same way. In the hill, Rastaman grow locks because to do otherwise is to interfere with nature. On the ground Rastaman say that in Numbers 6, the vow of the Nazarene tell him not to cut him hair. Or him use the story of Samson and Delilah.

As for me, locks is a lifestyle choice. I have a whole lot of history backative and cross-cultural motivation, to say nothing of current fashion. As far as I’m concerned, combing hair should be the least of my priorities and not something that I obssess over. In the grand scheme of life, there are more important things I could be doing in the time it takes to do hair. Hypocritical? Yes. I still have to visit the hair salon every so often to keep it neat and clean. So, no, I haven’t entirely forsaken the ways of the world. But as Miss Lou say: if you don’t follow fashion, you will never inna style.

Pax.