There's more to Carnival than bad headlines

One of the most striking sights at the Notting Hill Carnival last Monday came on the approach roads and streets. Long before you encountered the whistles and horns, the sound systems and carnival floats, the dancers, prancers and chancers, there were houses boarded up. Not because they’re derelict or rundown, but because the residents of these expensive gaffs were taking no chances with Carnival-goers.

Much has changed in west London in the 50 years since Carnival first paraded proudly this way and a lot of this has to do with property prices. When local activists and musicians first hatched plans for Carnival in the 1960s, it was about showcasing newcomers from the Caribbean and the West Indies and improving community relations with the west- London locals.

In those years when the Windrush generation were making a home for themselves in this part of the British capital, gentrification and million-quid houses were not on the cards in the neighbourhoods they called home. Instead, for a lot of the early decades, Carnival was synonymous with the hard-knock life of the locals. That Jamaican notion of sufferation was not just confined to the island, as the Mangrove restaurant arrests of 1971, the riots of 1976 and heavy-handed police tactics in-between showed.

Hassle

These days, it is the wealthy locals who are crying foul with calls for Carnival to be moved to a new location. There’s undoubtedly a lot of hassle and problems which come with hundreds of thousands of people roaming through your neighbourhood on the last weekend of the summer. The post-Carnival media headlines also accentuate the bother, with arrests, crime and incidents leading the way.

However, it’s worth noting that Carnival was here long before new arrivals began to buy up property and dig up basements to add new rooms to their houses. Carnival is part of the culture which defined this area in the first place and was probably part of the ‘hood’s attraction for those snapping up houses and around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove.

Carnival is many things – colourful, loud, vibrant, messy, friendly, sweaty, often unhinged, sometimes over-policed, always exuberant – but it’s a culture with strong ties to the Trinidadian and Jamaican homelands from where so many of the residents originally came. It’s present in the parade of floats and dancers. It’s evident in the three dozen sound systems broadcasting basslines around the Westway. It’s also there in the plates of jerk chicken and curry goat fuelling the weekend.

Old-school reggae

The music you hear all day speaks of this culture too, albeit in different ways. Sure, you have old-school reggae, rocksteady, ska, blues and soca booming from elaborate, mighty sound systems manned by crews such as the People’s Sound System or Channel One. This is music which is as raw and pure as it’s possible to get.

But there’s also plenty to represent the later generations too. These are the kids and grandkids of those first migrants who wanted their own sounds and put their stamp on London with house, jungle, drum’n’bass, hip-hop and, of course, grime.

Get up close with the raucous Rampage set-up or check out the sunnysideup push and pull of This Heatwave holding things down at Different Strokes or the youthful vigour of CMC Matrix or the gorgeous funk and disco at the Rapattack system and you’ll come away with some different takes on the sound of the area, never mind the city.

At Carnival, all of these disparate strands and colours come together gloriously.