The ritual - an Afro-American woman getting her hair done - Section 1: Black South Culture

I spent a recent Saturday getting my hair done. The whole day. For me, the monthly hair ritual consist, of rising early to untwist my thick, "awfully curly" (one woman's description) tresses. The untwisting - always accompanied by good music (Aretha Franklin, Cassandra Wilson and Alice Coltrane somehow seem appropriate) and a good book (Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bambara have been the choices of late) - usually takes three or four hours if I'm doing it alone, which, given the daunting nature of the project, I usually am. Then I wash and condition it thoroughly (which, contrary to popular belief, I and most other people who wear twists, braids, or locks do quite often). Then I hook up with the kindhearted sister who will re-twist it, which usually takes four to six hours, depending on how lively our conversations become and how frequent and long our breaks are. So the hair ritual literally takes all day.

Sometimes, I'm embarrassed to tell people about the ritual. I'll simply say that I can't meet them for lunch or can't make the cookout because I'll be tied up all day. I hesitate to elaborate because, unfortunately, many people view getting the hair done as a frivolous expenditure of time. These are the same folks who compliment well-coifed women and men but who obviously don't understand the time that must be invested to get the |do.

Never mind the fact that my particular hair ritual is rooted in ancient African traditions: For centuries women have communed together while scratching secrets from each other's heads; black women, in Africa and throughout the diaspora, have a long history of greasing, combing, twisting, and braiding each other's locks while contemplating and sometimes solving the problems of the world, both big and small. Never mind that one day is a small price to pay for at least a month of carefree (and, in my case, natural) curls. For these naysayers and unbelievers, getting the hair done is a frivolous pursuit that they greet with plenty of scoffing and eye-rolling, even in this day and age of post-afro enlightenment.

Which brings us to James Brown, whose wife Adrienne (according to Jet magazine) groomed and styled his hair on her weekly trips to see him in prison. James Brown, who is free at last and still funky. James Brown, whose hair is an essential part of his image. James Brown, the Funkmeister himself.

I bet James Brown is never embarrassed to tell people he's got an appointment with his hair stylist. And why should he be? For James Brown, the black cultural icon, hair is a manifestation of who he has become. And it serves that purpose for the rest of us as well. Whether nappy or straight, black hair - hair that defies gravity, hair that only powerful chemicals can tame into long- term submission, hair that's so strong, actress/comedian/funktition Phyllis Stickney theorizes, our ancestors used it to lift the Pyramids to their wondrous heights; hair that never strays from its essentially black roots, even when fried, dyed, and laid to the side - has become a quintessential expression of The Funk.

That's right, The Funk.

Some of us are afraid or ashamed of the Funk aesthetic that James Brown represents. It's a rawness, an on-the-edge passion that's in yo' face. This Funk, this black thang, screams out with unchecked emotion like Sister Edwards at the Pentecostal church, or Chaka Khan - or James Brown. It doesn't censor itself, and it doesn't take too kindly to being admonished not to make a scene. The Funk - the essence of blackness - always makes a scene. In America, it makes a scene simply by virtue of its presence in a man-made, white-washed world largely devoid of The Funk.

The Funk is the genius of black folks, the almost tangible, smellable, tastable collective contribution of African Americans.

But there are some among us who want to tame The Funk. Whites historically have attempted to impose their unimaginative aesthetics - indeed, their very mind sets - on us forever. But that's another story. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed black arbiters of what is "proper" or "politically correct" for African Americans seek to impose their constrictions on our arts and our culture, not to mention our hairstyles.

These arbiters of properness usually get their early training in middle-class homes, then go off to colleges and universities - finishing schools, in effect - where they learn how to talk proper ... ly and "how to behave," as Toni Morrison puts it in her novel The Bluest Eye (68).

In their miseducation, these black intellectual wannabes often learn "the careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners," in Morrison's words. "In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions" (68).

Witness the following quote from The Bluest Eye. Morrison's they refers to certain types of black women from Mobile or Meridian or Aiken, but it can be broadened to include many folks who take an elitist approach to black arts, culture, and aesthetics: