Let’s return to Sunday, June 26, 2016. I stroll towards a crowd of individuals gathered round a podium on the inexperienced lawns of Prospect Park. As I get nearer, the music will get louder and I see black individuals — their hair in afros, braids, twists, and different textured kinds of all lengths and colours — dancing, mendacity on blankets, shopping for meals, and the largely black-handed distributors. I rattling close to soar to the group, smiling broadly and my hips already shifting. I lastly bought to my first curlfest.
Seven years later, I returned to the competition, which was held on Randall’s Island on July 15, 2023. Established in 2014 by the Curly Woman Collective, the seventh version of the occasion was a comeback celebration after a three-year hiatus. . This 12 months’s theme was appropriately ‘Bounce Again’.
And bounce again it did. Although the placement modified and I used to be not the purple-haired lady in faculty, as soon as I noticed individuals and heard the soca music enjoying, I felt identical to once I first began faculty in 2016: energetic, excited and able to have enjoyable.
Curlfest is many issues: a competition, a celebration, a market, and in the end a celebration of Blackness and Black Magnificence. As I walked by way of the group, sweating profusely from the warmth (because of local weather change), I swung my head back and forth, taking in as many hairstyles as I might; a vivid orange fro, a kinky textured Kool-aid purple mohawk, colourful 3D butterflies and flowers woven in locs, afros, curls and so many different kinds.
Since Curlfest will not be again for an additional 12 months, listed here are a few of the most artistic seems to be to carry you over till the following magical occasion.
Jocelyn Williams
