London Evening Standard -- Ishmahil Blagrove Jr
There are many conflicting tales of how Notting Hill’s street festival began. But as this extract from a new book by Ishmahil Blagrove Jr reveals, the greatest debt is owed to one remarkable woman
Champ in town: Muhammad Ali visits the home of carnival founder Rhaune Laslett in 1966 (Pic: Getty Images)
...As the editor of the West Indian Gazette, Jones is often credited with having brought the celebration of Caribbean carnival culture to Britain. However credit is also due to many others, among them the Trinidadian husband-and-wife team of Pearl and Edric Connor, who were the booking agents for the artists and organised many of the events. The West Indian Gazette organised other indoor Caribbean Carnival cabarets that were performed at various London venues, including Seymour Hall, Porchester Hall and the Lyceum Ballroom, and continued until 1964, when Jones died prematurely from heart disease at the age of 49....
...When Henderson’s group arrived and began playing “pan”, West Indians — hearing the familiar sounds from home — flooded the streets. In line with the Trinidad carnival tradition of “making a rounds” (where steel-pan players march in the streets), the group led a procession that wove up Portobello Road towards Notting Hill Gate and back again, gathering new revellers along the way. Henderson had inadvertently put a Caribbean hallmark on the festival and word quickly spread to the other West Indian communities in England about what had taken place.
In successive years, although the carnival was still diverse and eclectic and ran as a week-long Notting Hill Festival, it became progressively more West Indian, and specifically Trinidadian, in flavour. Steel bands such as the Blue Notes led by Pedro Burgess, Les Flambeaux, Bay 57 and Melody Makers came out on the road. Trinidadian costume-maker Ashton Charles began creating traditional “fancy sailor” costumes for children. More and more steel-pan players, performers and West Indians joined in, and the street celebration came to eclipse the spread of events and activities happening at a variety of indoor venues.
The festival also began to take on more militant connotations in response to the pressures that black people and the counter-culture scene were experiencing at the hands of the police and the Establishment. The Black Power movement had spread across the Atlantic and gripped the imagination of the black masses. For some, it became increasingly uncomfortable to have a woman identified as white sitting at the helm of what was by now seen as a distinctly black Caribbean cultural affair...
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