The forgotten racial history of Notting Hill Carnival

Evening Standard

Stepping off the tube at Holland Park, you can always hear it before you see it. The rhythmic soca beat thuds in the distance, faint echoes of singing and cheering cut through the usually rarefied quiet. A colourful trail of feathers and tinnies provides a makeshift route map, weaving through the pristine streets of Ladbroke Grove until you burst all at once into a cacophony of sound and smell, swept into a kaleidoscopic parade of gyrating hips and infectious laughter.

Transcript

00:00 The Notting Hill Carnival started in 1964, but the prelude to that goes as far back as

00:07 the Windrush, because it was started by many people who came as part of the Windrush generation

00:14 between 1948 to 1972.

00:17 So many of them came with their skills and culture and traditions into London.

00:23 And as we all know, there were very, very difficult times for these Caribbean people.

00:29 And they ended up congregating in places like Brixton and Notting Hill.

00:35 They started to try to develop their own communities.

00:41 And the Notting Hill Carnival came about as a direct result of the Notting Hill riots,

00:47 because of course there was a lot of racism and hatred and discrimination going on at

00:53 the time.

00:54 An Antigon man called Kelso Cochran was murdered on the streets by gangs.

01:00 The idea of the carnival started with someone called Claudia Jones, who was a Trinidadian

01:05 journalist and decided that she would try and make every effort to unite the communities

01:11 and get them working together.

01:13 Carnival is a very integral part of our lives in Trinidad.

01:17 She wanted to replicate something similar.

01:20 So she started off holding galas in great halls, like having a steel band, having calypsos,

01:28 having dancers.

01:30 And she also engaged the services of her friend, Ross Henderson.

01:35 She asked him to play music in the street on this particular day for the children to

01:40 parade in costume.

01:42 My husband was one of the musicians who played with Ross Henderson.

01:46 And so they put all their instruments on their backs and around their necks and played music

01:51 in the streets of Notting Hill.

01:53 And that has been acknowledged as the start of the street carnival.

01:58 We told him, me and the children, that he had a choice of what we called the band.

02:05 And he decided on the word Genesis.

02:08 And we're one of the oldest and longest running bands that participates in Notting Hill Carnival.

02:16 My husband passed away in 2002.

02:20 But we ensured that our children understood the legacy, understood what carnival was about.

02:27 And they actually, to my wonderment and joy, they have actually embraced it fully.

02:36 (upbeat music)

02:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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