Attitude Out the Ears

A Dramatic Head of Hair Announces More Than Rebellious Spirit

The fro-hawk has been in, and out, and in again, but right now, in the waning days of summer, it's enjoying a certain renaissance.

You'll find it in the explosion of dreadlocks fanning out from the otherwise shaved head of a doorman at trendy Marvin in the District. See it doing a more subdued low-rise fade on Redman as he bounces onstage with the Wu-Tang Clan recently at the "Rock the Bells" rap tour. Or check it out, in all its glamour-girl glory, on Jack Davey, from the Los Angeles electronica duo J*Davey.

And stalk the gallery at Afropunk.com, the online community that sprang up in the wake of filmmaker James Spooner's 2003 documentary of the same name, and you'll encounter a bevy of fro-hawked folk who go by such monikers as AfrocousticPunk, Rape Whistle and Aunaturale22.

To be black and Mohawked -- or fro-hawked -- is to rage against both the machine and one's own community, a double dose of in-your-face outsiderism, rendering a life lived on the outskirts of the outskirts.

"I wanted to be the ultimate rebel," says New York artist/musician/indie label owner M.J. Zilla, who cut her waist-length dreads a couple of years back in favor of a flat-top/fro-hawk hybrid. "What better way to do it than to do the Mohawk? Socially, I'm making that statement: I'm definitely not going to conform any more . . .

"It's a symbol, a visual reference. They can say, 'Oh yeah, we knew she's trouble.' "

Consider the Mohawk, circa 1979, straight tresses shellacked into submission and directed upward, standing out against an expanse of shaved scalp. It provided instant identification with outrage and rebel status, with punk music and the culture that sprang up around it.

Then consider today's fro-hawk, kinked out or dreadlocked tresses directed upward, marching across the shorn pates of those of African descent. Think about Fishbone, rocking it out in the late '80s, blending punk, funk, ska, rap and metal. (But please, don't think about Mr. T.)

It's just hair, some folks like to say. No, it's not -- it's never just hair, certainly when you are African and American. It's got the power to provoke, to inspire, to outrage, to designate 21st-century tribal affiliations: The Tina Fey-esque "average hockey mom" up-do. The Angela Davis 'fro on the cover of the New Yorker. We're never going to let hair be just hair. The personal tends to dance with the political.

Why now? Part of it is the inevitable swing back to '80s-inspired duds -- the preoccupation with skinny jeans and leather jackets, stiletto booties and neon brights. Perhaps it's a response to hard economic times, to widespread layoffs and the fear that accompanies them, a giant nose-thumb to the idea that to work in corporate America, you've got to look a certain way.

"It's like, 'You don't have a job, do you?' " says Melvin Collins, a 34-year-old stylist, laughing. "A drunk guy at a party told me, 'You must just sit around the house all day.' "

Growing up in Southeast, Collins says, he was never a follower. He was a brother who wore skinny Levi's 501s in a sea of baggies that slid south. You get the sense that for Collins, with his cryptic references to a troubled adolescence, individuality was hard-won.