The History of Notting Hill Carnival

In Trinidad, during the days of slavery, slaves were forbidden to play musical instruments and wear costumes, apart from when the traditional imported European Carnival took place, six weeks before Easter. On those occasions their participation was limited to providing entertainment for the slave owners.

It was also known that slaves were forbidden to be in the streets after dark unless they were accompanying their owners. When the Laws were repealed and freedom from slavery was announced in 1833, the slaves took to the streets in song and dance, indulging in their culture and using their artistic skills to mimic their former owners and pour scorn on the system that had them enslaved for so long.

Consequently, slaves would dress like their previous owners, powder their faces to look pale like their masters or make masks to resemble their masters, distorting images and features if they regarded their masters as particularly evil or ridiculous.

  These celebrations of freedom provided the only opportunity for Black people to express their feelings about their slave owners and they quickly developed the art of costume making, creating fantastic costumes which satirized their situation as Africans, transported to the Caribbean as slaves. In Trinidad the tradition continued, going from strength to strength, as people from all over the island began to take part and associate themselves with Carnival. The skills of costume making, steel drumming and calypso became what today is a huge festival of arts and culture, of which Trinidadians everywhere are justifiably proud, drawing on all aspects of their cultural heritage from Africa and Europe.

  The arrival of Trinidadians in Great Britain, remembering their great Carnivals back home, provided the spark which ignited the Notting Hill Carnival. From a small procession through the streets with just a few people in costume and carrying steel drums in the 1960s, has evolved a huge multi-cultural arts festival, attended by up to two million people. It is a great tourist attraction that brings life to London during the month of August.