THE Africa woman head-wrap (dhuku) holds a distinctive position in the history of African dress both for its longevity and for its potent significations.
It endured the travail of colonialism and never passed out of fashion.
The dhuku represents far more than a piece of fabric wound around the head.
This distinct cloth head covering has been called variously ‘head rag’, ‘head-tie’, ‘head handkerchief’, ‘turban’, or ‘head-wrap’.
The head-wrap usually completely covers the hair, being held in place by tying the ends into knots close to the skull.
In style, the African-American woman’s head-wrap exhibits the features of sub-Saharan aesthetics and worldview.
In the United States, however, the head-wrap acquired a paradox of meaning not customary on the ancestral continent.
During slavery, white overlords imposed its wear as a badge of enslavement!
Later it evolved into the stereotype that whites held of the ‘Black Nammy’ servant.
The enslaved and their descendants, however, have regarded the head-wrap as a helmet of courage that evoked an image of true homeland – be that of ancient Africa or the ‘newer homeland’of America.
Tying a piece of cloth around the head is not specific to any one cultural group.
In other words, the style in which the fabric is worn is the ultimate cultural marker.
To wrap her head, a European or white-American woman simply folds a square piece of fabric into a triangular shape and covers her hair by tying the fabric under her chin; or, less often, by tying it at the nape of the neck.
The terms ‘scarf’ or ‘kerchief’ usually denote this type of head covering.
Scarves are not particularly popular items of white-American women’s fashion today, but when they are worn, they consistently are arranged in the manner I just described above.
The most significant difference between the Euro
In effect, African women wear the head-wrap as a queen might wear a crown.
In this way, the head-wrap corresponds to African and women’s manner of hair styling, wherein the hair is pulled so as to expose the forehead and is often drawn to a heightened mass on top of the head.
A head-wrap is a common women’s cloth head scarf in many parts of southern and western Africa.
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