Stuff You Should KnowDreadlocks are matted coils of hair that form a very distinctive (and often misunderstood) hairstyle. So what's the deal with dreads? In this episode, Josh and Chuck examine the long history of dreadlocks and walk you through the process of dreading hair.
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from house toff works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I and I am Josh Clark and with me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I knew you were gonna I was waiting for it. You had no idea. I didn't know that, but I just I knew there was some sort of reggae thing coming up. That was all the cuff tap. Really yeah, no, no way, it really was. I thought about it, and like my stomach got all butterflies, and I was like, I'm gonna do it A plus A. Thank you, Chuck. How are you doing. I'm great, You're feeling good today. I've been under the weather again. Yeah, I just don't feel quite right. Like if ten is feeling great and then one is sick, I meant like, uh, like a five and a or six? Is it that staff infects? And still I don't know what the deal is. I would imagine that would have lasting effects after for you know, it's not like a normal stomach bugs. That's like a stomach terrorist. Our podcast is on a watch list now that I just said that. I think so, does that mean more audience? Possibly at least the ns will be listening, um chuck. Back in my hippie days, uh, there was this question that was on everyone's mind. There was a piece of knowledge that wasn't passed around adequately among the hippie counter culture that I was hanging out with, and that was exactly how to dread your hair if you didn't have kinky or curly hair. So the people that did that kept in a guarded secret or else they didn't tell anybody, or they were vague when they did tell. What I suspect is based on the my experience with humorless hippie people, they did say because they didn't want to overtly make themselves look like jerks and say, you know, I'm not telling. They would just be very vague and unhelpful. Plus they probably don't want to make it seem like it took too much work. You know, that's probably part of it as well, because that's not as cool if you had to like work at it three or four hours today, or if if your mom was helping you on a Saturday night, you like, it's just gonna happen man. So I remember having this conversation with this friend of mine who actually ended up on TV later on because I guess the dreads didn't work out. He had a TV show um on ht TV actually, um yeah, he was called bush Whacked. He went in like guerrilla garden people's landscapes. That's awesome. Anyway he was. He was talking to me once he was playing with this hair. I noticed that it was really really greasy. Um, like, hadn't been watching several days greasy this when he had dreads. No, he was trying to get I asked him, what are you doing with your hair? And he's like, I'm trying to dread it. And I was like, you actually have to watch it, man, because that grease is keeping it from tangling. And I remember this look coming over his face, like, Wow, you just blew my mind. That was the closest I ever came to being able to explain how dreadlocks work until today. Now, after years of wondering and then even more years of not caring, when you get to the point where I'm finally understand how dreadlocks are formed among white people especially, Yeah, sure, and I think it's I think the history is a little more interesting than than my stupid anecdote. No, no, than the actual process. But we'll cover the process too, because there's people out there right now that are wondering it. Behooves us. They're they're nineteen twenty year olds out there who are who have greasy hair and can't figure out why it's not dreading or they put gasoline. You ever hear that. No, that's a very bad rumor that gasoline in your hair helped it. Not true, helps your hair catch on fire? Having more than once? All right, So, Chuck, you were saying about the history of the dreadlock. What are we talking about? We were talking about the history the dread Does that ever come back? I can't wait to hear how Jerry edits that? Good luck? Uh so, Josh. Prehistoric humans probably had some form of dreadlock from the neglect method of forming dreadlocks, letting it tangle up, letting it do its own thing and matt matt up and weave itself into dreads. Right and right about here, I think people are going to have a question like, well, didn't didn't people who you know lived in prehistoric eras, they didn't wash their hair, So how did their hair dread. Why wasn't their hair greasy? You want to know the answer of that that I've heard. Um, prehistoric people lived out in the woods and slept on the ground, and leaves and dirt got in their hair and actually carry the grease away. Really, huh is that true? That's what I've heard. I didn't do my standard intensive research for this particular podcast. They don't know that that's true. But that's a Josh theory. I like it. Well, dude, they have discovered mummies. Peruvian mummies as old as two hundred d had dreads, and more recently than that, Aztec Aztec priests in the fourteen and fifteenth century had demanded dreads. Yes, and they're not all. There's also contemporary groups. Religious groups specifically dreads tend to pop up, it turns out, in as as a sign of religious devotion in a lot of cases. Right, Yeah, the fact like this is God's body, and even grooming it would be um would not be an aesthetic valve. So if you take that aesthetic value, you're not even You're not gonna do anything to your body, right, You're just leaving your hair to do what it will naturally exactly, And um, so, who who do we have? I know the Coptic Church in Ethiopia. Priests in that church still um Christians with their hair, right, I say that as if Christians, there's Christians in Africa. Uh. In India, the Sado sect of Hinduism, they they have the old dreads in honor of Shiva. Wouldn't it be weird to see an Indian guy with dreads? You know, I've seen dreads on so many different kinds of people. Now, I don't think anything, I'm with you, but I think one of the few ethnic groups that I've not seen dreads on are um South Asians. Yeah. Well, and actually, like in Japan it's pretty popular now. But yeah, I've seen I've seen Asians with dreads. I've never seen an Indian. Interesting, Yeah, with dreadlocks. That's why I'm like, call for listener male right now, if you are of Indian descent and you have dreadlocks, please in a photo. That's right. Okay, Now back to the show. Rasta Buddhist and Japan. That's what we were just talking about. UM. Members of the Black Muslim uh bay Fall sect in Senegal, rights in New Zealand, the Kiwi or Kiwi friends Mayoris, isn't it Mary? I don't know. I'm gonna go with Mary and uh, different African tribes where dreadlocks a gola and then maybe at places like that, right and the Rasta's right. Well yeah, sure. So when you think of dreadlocks, you think Bob Marley, and when you think of Bob Marley you think of reggae and Rastafarianism basically, right, among other things. Yeah, I left one thing out, didn't i? Um? And he was pretty much the poster boy for dreadlocks and Rastafarianism, and he almost yeah, you don't want to say single handedly, but he was a large force in introducing dreadlocks to the West and the symbolism, the mythology behind them, uh, and behind how it was associated with Rastafarianism, which it turns out Jamaican Rastafarianism isn't that old. Yeah, I thought it was much older than what eighty years? Yeah, it was came out of the artis when Hollis Selassie the First was throned Emperor of Japan. Yeah, of Japan. Did you know that? The Ethiopia Ethiopia right, Um? And they're apparently a sect of Jamaicans believed him to be the Messiah and built a religion Rastafarianism around him. And the Dreadlocks are a big part of that because they feel, um that it has to do with keeping you in a pure state as God created you as well, and they point to Samson in the Bible, even though we're gonna get to that that's a myth, yes, so they say. And they also it was sort of a sort of rebelling against the European invasion of the world, the imperialism, European imperialism. And uh, the author of this article, Matt Sailor, who I do not know, to you, um must be a freelancer. Matt Sailor points out that, um, it's rooted in the idea of the West as a place of captivity in Africa's paradise. And as you were saying, it kind of rebels against European ideals of beauty, right, or it did at the time, Like we're not gonna have the lustrous blonde hair, fine hair exactly, We're gonna grow together matted clumps, and we're going to be proud of it in your face, in your face. And and it's possible that the Rastafarians were um inspired by the Mau Mau tribe. Yeah, that's what I wanted to know, is where it came from. Well, this is possibly where it came from. The Mau Mau are located in Kenya and they were a um a tribe that rose up against British colonial rule. And actually there's a Magnum p I episode that puts Jonathan Higgins in the in the middle of a Mau Mau uprising in the fifties. Yeah, you see that one. It's good. That sounds familiar. I think it might have. Actually, Um, there's a guy with the spear. There's like a Mau Mau warrior that's stalking the the estate Robin's Nest. Does it's called anyway? They think that they were they were inspired by the Mau Mau in their uprising against British colonial rule, which makes a lot of sense. Um. And they also think that this may be where the name Dreadlock came from, right, Yeah, that it inspired dread in the in the hearts of the British soldiers. And it's possible that it's not necessarily attached to the Mau Moo. That Rastafarians realized that it possibly inspired dread in the fear in the hearts of um Westerners. Right, it's always dread in the heart, dread And yeah, you're not gonna feel that anywhere, maybe just in the heart, maybe the stomach. It's stomach dread and the loins of the British soldiers loin dread is the worst, Josh uh So, um dread lucks today they spread obviously, you said Bob Marley had a lot to do with that, with his popularity so untold in the nineteen seventies. You know, I posted to Bob Marley video on the Facebook page one day and I got killed for it. Why. I didn't know that there were so many anti reggae people out there. And I'm not Mr. Reggae like at all, but I like a little Bob every now and then, and as did some people. But some people are like, I can't believe he posted this. Reggae is the worst? How are you? No, that's not correct, We thank you. That's really weird. I don't think I've I've heard of people who are like, no, I'm not really into reggae, Like it seems like one of those those music genres that's not really polarizing it's either you kind of like it or you're really into it, not you're really into it or you hate it. They hated it, that's crazy. I think they were you know, are you sure they weren't confusing it with country music? Maybe so maybe they thought Bob Marley is the country music. Uh So, he and his whalers in the seventies made it very popular in the United States and then actually everywhere well the world. Sure he made it popular in one hand, but it also increased the anti dreadlock. I wouldn't say it's a movement, but like with the whole marijuana thing, and it was tied to you know, some people would say, like drug use, how so, well, the Rastafarians they like their their pot. Explain from what I'm told, there's no explanation. And the writer Mr. Dreams Sailor also pointed out movies like Marked for Death and Predator To Predator To, both released, actually had something to do because they depicted menacing gangs with dreadlocks. I don't know about that. I don't know if they hastened it or else, if they were maybe born out of, you know, some sort of public view of dreadlock. Any dreadlockynism. Yeah, you know, but it's a good point, like he's saying, we used to view people with dreadlocks as menacing drug dealers who corrupted children, and now we view them as, um, you know, wealthy kids who go to college and yeah, follow fish around on tour because that's popular. So Chuck, let's say you are a an aspiring fish tour kid, right, especially even on tour any longer. Did they get back together and break up and get back together again? I don't know, we'll find out. Let's say you're following somebody string cheese incident. Let's say, right, you get your hula whoop and your little fairy wings, and you're like, it's time for me to take the third step, which is to dread my hair. Right, um, and you want to get things started, and we're gonna we'll we'll talk about how to do with kinky hair and with straight hair, right, Yeah, much easier with kinky hair. Let's let's start from the beginning. What's what's step one? Because we literally there's literally a step by step list of instructions in this article. Step one, Josh, which is what your friend did not do. You gotta wash your hair, and you gotta dry it. Yes, that's the very first thing you do. And a really good recommendation is to wash your hair with a very natural um type of shampoo because those things to rip your hair, and you want your hair stripped and dried. Basically, you don't want any residue on it whatsoever. Certainly, no grease, no grease. Step to Josh, you wanna divide it into sections. And by sections, what we mean is when you pull a clump of your hair together and you can either like clamp it with something, or you can just do one section at a time, or you can separate it all out right and you want to clamp it at the end. The tip well, yeah, but what you gotta remember is is, uh make a little squares basically, so you can see your scalp in a little square. And that's a section. But each section in theory will end up being its own dreadlock. So if you if you want five huge dreadlocks, then you're gonna have five sections. But you don't want that, well, some people do, well, yeah, sure, some people let them grow together. Have you ever seen those like the beaver tail? Those are awesome. They're impenetrable. We'll talk about that in a minute. Well. Uh, Step three, Josh is well, like I said, pay attention to the size of the section, right, Like you said, when you pull your hair, it's going to it should form a pretty much a perfect square. And the bigger the square, the bigger the dreads going to be. Right. So that's kind of your rule of thumb exactly. Step forward, you want to add a little product. And and this is probably the most contentious step because some people are purest, right, they don't do that. Some people you just use a little water, right. Some people say whax. A lot of people say whax alo cream? Uh, this is this is we should say this is for kinky hair. Uh is it? Yeah? Aloe and cream is for sure. Okay. Well, and the they say the Rastafarians are are really the purest and they only use like purified water to they're not putting wax in their hair. But if you use straight here and you're going to use product, you should use wax. Okay, where are we? Step five you want to start twisting in a clockwise direction. And the reason you do that is so you always remember which direction you've started, because if one day you go to palm roll it counterclockwise. You're gonna start undoing your dreads unknowingly. And when you when you twist your hair lock, you want to you want to clip it at the end and explain backcombing because I don't I don't fully understand that it's it's easy. Um if you ever have you ever approached a cat and um, it was just sitting there, it looks all happy and content and you're like, I hate cats, So you pet it the opposite way of the way its hair goes. Yes, cats don't like that, No they don't. It's hilarious as it rubs them the wrong way. That's where the phrase comes from. Um huh yeah, uh. This is pretty much the basis of backcoming. So what you do is you have your tight product um counter clockwise rolled hair. Actually we should say this is for straight hair. You don't backcomb kinky hair. Um, so you you haven't. You haven't hand rolled your your hair yet if it's straight, but you have some product in it, You have your your segments and are eventually gonna become dreads. Maybe it's clipped at the bottom. What you're taking. What you're doing is you're taking a fine toothed metal comb. You're holding the tip of the hair and you're combing it upwards all the way to the route, and you keep doing this again and again and again until basically you really can't get the um the comb up through the hair any longer because you just tangle it so badly. And then you move on to the next segment and do that again and again. Intel Basically what you're doing is you just jump starting your dreadlocks. Well yeah, we say jump start because if you want dreadlocks tomorrow, you're out of luck. Not necessarily, you can pay through the nose and probably be made fun of in certain circles. Um a loctician to go to a loctician who will um use a crocheting kit your hair. They really look like dread they look like braids. I don't know. It probably depends on how messy the loctician makes them look. You know, I'm gonna go ahead and go on on a limb and say that's not genuine and they don't look like real dreadlocks. Well yeah, if you're one of those people who will only wash your dreads and natural pure water and that's it, you're probably not going to go to a loctician. I'm the purist, Josh, are you That's how I roll. So if you are a purist and you don't want to go to a loctician and pay a lot of money and look silly, then, uh, it's gonna take a while. And it ranges depending on your hair, you know, the texture of your hair, anywhere from a few months to like a year sometimes, right And for kinky hair. Um, there's actually a couple of stages, um, the budding stages where the locks really start to kind of um intertwined. This lasts anywhere from like two months to six months, right right. Uh. And then at the end of that Um, at the end of that that budding stage where it's really starting to kind of like not close to the scalp, it'll start growing out and it will keep nodding as it grows out. What you have, my friend, is called the dreadlock. You're in the locking stage a k a. The point of no return. Yeah. And since you mentioned the root, if it, you don't want to tangle it too close to your scalp because that can it can actually break off and kill that not so you want to also really hurt Well, yeah, I'm sure give you give you the old headache. You want to have a little bit of space there so your hair can still grow normally. And this is something I didn't know, but it makes perfect sense. As your hair grows and dies, it's just becomes part of the dread. Right, So it's not like when you see a fourteen inch dreadlock. All that goes back to the root of the scalp, right, Most of that is dead hair. Yeah, it's just kind of like gets caught up and it never falls out. You can't shed, and you're certainly not cutting your hair off. So we should say what palm rolling is. I think we mentioned that twice and we didn't really say what it was. So let's say you decided to use wax or something like that. Let's go with wax because that seems to be the best thing. Okay, Um, you put a little on your on your dread and you roll it in that clockwise position. Again, it's basically yeah, it's basically just maintenance, an encouragement of those, um, those tangled knots to stay tangled. That's a lot of work, man, it is. Um. So all that was for you. We entered the locking stage with kinky hair with straight hair. Um, you want to keep the uh, you want to keep applying wax a few times a week actually after this sum after the initial um tangling, the initial waxing. Yes, well, and they said to hair to blow dry it. So the wax actually kind of melt in your hair. Yes, So well we'll get to that. Let's figure it. Let's let's talk about how to do this. There's there's something that a lot of people don't understand, and that is that if you have mature dreadlocks, let's say it's been six months to two years, you've got your actual dreads going, they're all looking sharp. Um. If you don't take care of your hair, you're gonna have all sorts of little um critters growing in it a k. A. Mildew is a big problem actually. Um. That's why a lot of people wash the hair with like teachree oil based soap, because it'll get in there and kill it's an antimicrobial. Well, and that's also from improper drying too. Right, So when you wash your hair right, um, a lot of times, especially when you're washing it while it's in the budding or locking stages, it's they're not mature dreadlocks. You want to put a pinty hose on your head. Then you got a panty on your head, uh, and you want to let basically just let the water go through, so you don't want to get your fingers in there. You want to keep your fingers out of there, let the hair go through, wash it with teach reol soap, and then when you get out the drying part, this is very important, squeeze it out, ring them out. Especially if they're mature, you can bring them out more easily. Um, if they're not mature, possibly you just roll them in your panty hose, uh and then um, you blow dry the heck out of them until they're totally dry. The funny thing is there are very few blow dryers on tour. Yeah I imagine so yeah, so that you're saying they have mildewy head, he's nodding hair care products. That's this is sort of again like with all things, if you're a purist, you're not into it at all, And everyone has their own things they use from like hot oil treatments to gels and salt water accelerator and stuff like that to like really tighten them up. Lenny Kravit style. Again, if you are washing your hair using a product and you don't want to use the standard you know leaves your hair silky and lustrous, because silky and lustrous by basically um she in casing that the hair in like some sort of substance that keeps it from tangling with other stuff. So that's the opposite of what you want with dreads. A chemical agent. Probably that's the European standard of beauty, Josh. If you sleep, um, you should wear like a bandana or one of those cool knit caps or a pillow case. So you don't like crush your dreadlocks and and misshape them unless that's what you're going for, right, and you're talking about um dreadlocks that um villa eventually weave together into one big dread. Yeah, if you want. If you want that, go for it. Just don't keep them separate. But if you don't want that, you should probably be aware that your dreads are eventually going to go to that place, so you want to kind of keep them separate rolled apart. That's part of regular maintenance. Josh. You have dreadlocks and you don't want them any longer, do you have to shave your head pretty much. No, not true, pretty much too. Now. I've known people that that got rid of their dreads through a lot of work and coming. Actually that remembered the Kristen who wrote in with the Sun Slowly, Yeah, a long time ago, of course. I remember she's an artist. She had dreadlocks and she got rid of them because I remember she sent in another picture like eight months later or something and she had like, you know, lustrous European beauty hair really yeah, and she said that she was able to you know, like use like lots of conditioner I think, and combing out, and I think it takes a long time. So you don't have to shave your head. You probably will, though I would imagine it probably depends on a couple of things, like how long the distance between your scalp and the start of the real dread is. And if it's close to the scalp, you probably are going to have to cut him off and then shave your head to make it even. Yeah, I think you would want to, like, after having dreadlocks for that long, why like untangle them just to have a big mop of hair, like just go the opposite, That's what I say, Yes, And it's funny that this is brought up because I was recently reading about your Balkan vampires and apparently one light reading just laughed at me. Well, I mean, I don't know. I didn't know that you were into that. Well, I'm not. It was in Harper's. It was interesting though. Anyway. The author was talking about how this one particular type of vampire in Croatia was known to braid the mains of horses so tight that they couldn't be detangled. And if you cut it off, it was so close to this to the neck it would kill a horse. That's what I hear. That's awful. So, Josh, you want to end up with some myths and truths. Did we cover everything else? Yeah? Uh, Samson had dreadlocks in the Bible or not. Um, I'm gonna go with myth. You're right, Sampson did have the long hair. I don't know if you've noticed enough, but all of these were myths. They are actually just ruined it though. Uh, Sampson did have the long hair apparently where he got all the strength and all that stuff. But they said it was more likely like ornamental braids. Dreadlocks more likely, though, we don't know, Josh, ancient Celts and Egyptians had dreadlocks myth or not true. That's a myth oh uh. And this came from artwork, ancient artwork, Um was misinterpreted basically over the years. And the Egyptians I think shave their head and wore head dresses made out of braid braided hair. Easily confused, Josh, dreadlocks can stop bullets. Uh, this has not been tested. I know Bob Marley was shot like eight times once in an assassination attempt and survived that it's possible that his dreads deflected it. Um, But it's very tight. Weave has been shown to deflect bullets. Yeah. Just last year, that lady I remember, I think we talked about on the webcast. No you, um, you blogged about it. She was shot in the weave and it it stopped a bullet. Well in theory, because the way dread's working now, it's it's it's like, uh, like jute rope or like a we a woven rug. You know, each hair is intertwined, and that's sort of how when we did the bullet Proof fest. It's a similar theory, just a really tightly woven fibers, very strong fibers. But yeah, the weave is definitely part of it, a huge part of it. You need to get one of those guys with a big beaver tail dread and just hold it out and shoot a gun through it and see see what he says, be like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? And finally, Josh, dreadlocks can be donated to charity, cut off and donated. It's just like you know, regular hair. I'm gonna say that that's a myth. That is a myth. Uh. Lots of love and wigs for kids do not accept dreadlocks. And you can actually get fired for having dreadlocks. Did you know that? I yes, this makes sense to me. Um. There's a lot of discrimination that corporations can still exercise against their employees, and one of them is like you, if you don't appear clean, you can be fired. You can be fired if you are too fat in your company's opinion. Yeah, Um, there are. In this particular article, though, um dream Sailer makes a point that if you are a Rastafarian practicing Rastafarian and they fire you because your dreads, you've got a pretty good lawsuit on your hand. But if you're just some kid with dreads and they fire you because of your dreads, you're going to be fired. Go back to selling T shirts out of your van in the parking lot of the Fish Show. Yeah. I got nothing else, nor do I So if you want to learn more about dreadlocks, seriously, this is one of the most helpful articles I've seen. Steps one through six of how to make dreads. There's another eight or ten steps in dreadlock hair care. Uh. It's really one you should go to if you want if you're if you want to know how to make dreads, if you want to make dreads out of your hair, go check out how dreadlocks work in the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, Josh, I am going to call this from Eddie, who hopes things get better. Hi. My name is Eddie. I'm fifteen, almost sixteen, in the tenth grade. The comment you made about how it will only get better if I just hold on and work through high school with something I really needed to hear, aw with friendships that I have no idea, what's going on to work that keeps piling on? I was worried I would be stuck like this after school ended. Uh. The news about the real world, real world being a lot worse than high school doesn't give me easy thoughts. So I'm glad to get a different viewpoint. Thank you, and I will take this opportunity now Josh to mention the it Gets Better project, because we didn't even know about this when we mentioned that. No, if you were listening to us, mentioned that, I don't remember what podcast it was the no it was a jealousy. I think we're talking about high school and kids killing themselves in high school. Um, And we didn't mention that it Gets Better campaign. We just pretended like we made it up ourselves. We like when we recorded it that it Gets Better campaign and have been launched like the day before, and we hadn't heard of it yet. Honestly, we we aren't. Yeah, we weren't. We weren't shirking it. So along those lines, we want to give it an official plug. It is a project called it Better project dot com and it is targeted at LGBT youth um right now. My personal hope is that they expand that to include anyone who feels like an outsider in any way. That's specifically anyone who feels like an outsider in high school. Well yeah, because if you feel like an outsider is an adult, you're I mean high school outsiders. But it's a really great program founded by Dan Savage in September and uh users can upload videos of themselves testimonials as adults talking to kids saying that trust me, it gets better hanging there. Yeah, and everybody's been doing it, I know. Uh. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both had really yeah, that's nice. What about Karl rovean Dick Cheney, They actually did went together. It was so cute and adorable, if so playful together. So that was from Eddie. And if you want to check out Eddie on YouTube, he's a YouTube channel Comic Dud, and he draws comics for that channel, and you can go there and see what Eddie has to say. And Eddie, it does get better, trust me, buddy. Thank you for that, Eddie. And if you have a photo of an Indian and Asian Indian with dreadlocks, we want to see it. Send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. 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