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INDIANAPOLIS — African hair braiding dates back centuries.
“It originated in 3500 BC,” Tempest Golden, the assistant campus director at Tricoci University of Beauty Culture in Fishers, told WRTV. She teaches the history and styles of African hair braiding.
Braiding was how African tribes indicated their tribal nation, age, marital, and class status.
Braided hairstyles are still a way of identifying oneself in the Black and African American communities. However, as time has progressed, the styles have transcended into a form of individual expression and protection.
“It still is an expression to identify who you are, what you believe in,” Golden, 32, said.
From Bantu knots, also known as Nubian knots or Zulu knots, to box braids or cornrows, braiding as a hairstyle has lasted generations in the Black and African American culture. It’s just as likely evolved.
“It’s always been the same,” Golden says, “Everything is a big cycle. So what they did back in the ’80s is coming back where they’re doing what we call now ‘tribal braids,’ but we used to call them ‘layer braids,’ or what they call ‘lemonade braids’ now is what we used to call ‘feeders,’ where you’re just feeding hair in — so it’s just one big cycle.”
Read more from WRTV here
Fishers beauty school teaches expression and evolution of African hair braiding was originally published on wtlcfm.com
