There are many ways to accomplish this. Here's one that I've used in production:

Create nurbs curves for your strands. Then position poly planes at the roots of each curve. Select the plane, and the curve, and perform a poly extrude. Change the divisions and the taper of the extrude. Do this for all planes/curve pairs. Once you have the geometry you have a couple of options. You can either use soft bodies in the dynamics menu, make the curves dynamic through maya hair (make sure you haven't deleted the history on the planes, else the extrudes won't follow), or use ncloth. Probably the easiest one would be the dynamic curves. You'll then need to pin the root of each curve to the scalp.

If you need any more help, don't hesitate to ask!