If I hadn’t stumbled upon this photo album a few years ago featuring over 100 African women and the hairstyles they wore pre-colonization, I probably would have never started!
Hair played a major cultural role in precolonial societies. According to societies, they used hairstyle to communicate religion, wealth, age, social class, tribe, ethnic identity, marital status. Hair also had a lot of spiritual connotations communicating things like fertility, vitality (the more hair you have, the more fertile and strong, healthy, powerful) and hair was for wax have a way to communicate with the divine (mostly the The longer the hair, the more receptive you are to receiving messages from the spiritual entity).
In some societies only our loved ones could comb our hair because, due to the strong spiritual connotation of hair, the hair in the enemy’s hand could become an ingredient in the production of a ‘enchantment’ dangerous to reach the owner. Africans had a wide variety of hairdos. It wasn’t just limited to braids, twists and braided styles but sculptures. the styles also included trinkets such as pearls, gold, or rhinestones.
The Karo tribe of the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia is one that we personally feel connected to, not just attracted to. Afraka has been fetishized for centuries, in many ways. How do we distinguish if we’re inappropriately portraying cultural traditions like face paint for example? We believe the genuine connection to the culture and inner-standing of traditions come with both education and application. There are so many expressions of culture on the continent of Afraka… learn more about them and honor them by truly having a purposeful relationship and personal connection to the sacred.✨ . . . #CoinsandCowries #HealingHealers #healershealing #blackhealers #OmoValley #tribal #bodyart #Ethiopia #Ethiopian #tribalpaint #CowrieShells #Afraka #Afrakan #AfricanArt #melanin #blackmen #spirituality #SacredArt https://www.instagram.com/p/BwVdnXWFILI/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1qsulje7xnp2o
