Food

Carnival food by numbers (and how much gets eaten)

• 30,000 corn on the cobs
• 15,000 fried plantains
• 1 ton of rice and peas
• 1 ton of Jamaican patties
• 12,000 mangoes
• 16,000 coconuts
• 10,000 litres of Jamaican stout
• 25,000 bottles of rum
• 70,000 litres of carrot juice

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/22/food-at-notting-hill-carnival_n_5697261.html

There are over 300 food stalls just waiting to be cleaned out at the Notting Hill Carnival every year. Above is a list of all the traditional foods found at carnival and how much is often consumed every year. Of course the types of food you are destined to come across at carnival are all related to Caribbean culture and the dishes normally served in the islands, such as a lot of jerk chicken and pork.

Jerk chicken is the most popular Caribbean meat often prepared. It is cooked in what is called a “jerk drum,” which is equivalent to an oil drum turned sideways and used for barbequing. The most common ingredients that bring about that famous jerk flavor are elements such as ground allspice berries, scotch bonnet chillies, spring onions, thyme, and a lot more. The key to perfect jerk chicken is a hot and slightly sweet smoky flavor with crisp skin and tender meat. And with this you’ll usually find sides such as rice and peas, plantains, corn, and a lot of rum.

Kelso Cochrane

Man who stabbed Antiguan carpenter through the heart in Notting Hill 'race killing' finally named after 50 years

• A new book claims the identity of the killer had been an 'open secret' since Kelso Cochrane's death
• 'Weapon is still under the floorboards in the house where alleged murderer, Patrick Digby, lived with his mother'

By LOUISE BOYLE
UPDATED: 08:14 EST, 8 September 2011

       

                              

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2034957/Patrick-Digby-killed-Kelso-Cochrane-Notting-Hill-book-says.html

Kelso Cochrane was a carpenter from Antigua. On his way home from the hospital with a fractured thumb on May 17, 1959, he was attacked by a group of white youths and stabbed to death in the streets of Notting Hill, London. More than 1,200 people showed up at his funeral.

While police reported the incident as a robbery, the black community in London was outraged and convinced that the murder was an act of racist motive. Just a year previous, race riots had broken out around the area, and with the addition of Cochrane’s murder, the community decided they’d had enough. Soon after the murder, Claudia Jones organized events to celebrate Caribbean culture, as she put it, “in the face of the hate from the white racists,” and these events are looked upon as forerunners of the first Notting hill Carnival.

For 50 years the murder of Cochrane had gone unsolved, until investigators received claims that a man named Patrick Digby had confessed Cochrane’s killing to a group of friends and expressed that he’d never be caught. Allegedly, the weapon used to kill Cochrane is still under the floorboards in the house where Digby lived with his mother at the time of the murder.  

Though officials had feared that Cochrane's death would only feed the tension between blacks and whites in the community, it actually spurred the beginnings of the Notting Hill Carnival, which is now an event known to bring a variety of races together to celebrate one culture.

The Soul of Calypso

Soca is another style of music typically played/performed during the Notting Hill Carnival. It is known as “the soul of calypso,” also a genre of Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 1970s. It further developed into a multitude of styles in the 80s and onward, continuously evolving and transforming with various cultural influences, a lot of which come form cadence, funk, and soul.

The “godfather” of soca was a Trinidadian man named Garfield Blackman, who was famously known as Lord Shorty with his first hit in 1963 called “Cloak and Dagger.” He began writing and performing songs in the genre of calypso, but then began to experiment with different sounds, blending calypso with elements of Indo-Caribbean music. It took nearly a decade for soca music to become a popular genre. Shorty was the first to give soca music a definition, and it was primarily with his song “Indrani” in 1973 and his album “Endless Vibration” in 1975.

In “Indrani,” Shorty demonstrates the style of soca with the fusion of calypso, cadence, and Indian musical instruments, mainly the dholak, tabla, and dhantal. And soca has since grown to incorporate all kinds of musical elements and has been experimented with in Bollywood films, Bhangra, new Punjabi pop, and American disco all as well as being a popular tradition of Notting Hill Carnival music.

"Indrani" - Lord Shorty

"Ducking" - Fadda Fox (soca music today)

Masquerade (M2K)

Masquerade, a.k.a. “playing mas,” is a tradition of carnivals all over the world to dress in costume and/or parade as part of a mas band. The phrase “playing mas” comes from Trinidad during the time of slavery when the slaves were allowed to dress in costume and play instruments for six weeks of European Carnival. Due to this history, the mas incorporates both African and Western elements, and when the East Indians were brought into Trinidad as indentured servants they contributed their own cultural styles as well. Historically, playing mas in carnival is a celebration of the freedom of Trinidadian slaves, and today it’s a celebration of a multi-racial, multi-cultural world.

Masquerade also honors both teamwork and self-expression, and in the Notting Hill Carnival you’ll find all kinds of costumes all handcrafted by designers specifically for the comfort and preference of the wearer. “Mas camps” are typically where carnival costumes are made, and one of these bands, which has become very popular for carnival, is called Masquerade 2000, or M2K. It was founded in 1992 by designer Lincoln Rahamut and began as a voluntary organization. The band was created to give the Caribbean community a greater opportunity to celebrate their heritage through the art of costume design that would also provide experience and understanding of the Caribbean culture to a wider community.

Below is a launch video for M2K and the Notting Hill Carnival of 2012, as well as a link to Masquerade 2000’s website.

http://m2kmas.com/

Carnival on the News

Greg Mckenzie with BBC News ventures down to the streets where the Notting Hill Carnival is taking place and speaks with one of the directors of the carnival Louis Ben who has a major hand in organizing this grand event. They recognize that it is a celebration of Caribbean culture and Ben mentions that putting together the carnival is an “all-year round event,” it doesn’t just happen over night. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into preparing for this one weekend of the year.

In this newscast, we’re in the midst of the carnival of 2014 where, despite the rainy weather, over a million people have come out to celebrate and join in the festivities of carnival. In Ben’s interview he mentions that 2014 is the celebration of 50 years of the steel pan bands being in London; however, the carnival itself has only, at this point, been a tradition in Notting Hill for 48 years. Ben says that in the next couple of years they will be celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the carnival “as we know it,” which began in 1966.

As the story closes out, Mckenzie is asked what people who have never been to the Notting Hill Carnival have to do if they attend, and he responds with three things: dance, “blow the whistles,” join in and have fun.

It is interesting to see how celebrated the Notting Hill Carnival is still today. I had no idea how big of a deal it was to those in London and Trinidad until digging up research on the carnival itself. In fact, I was never even aware that such a carnival existed until this year, which is why I think newscasts, stories, and interviews such as these are important for letting other cultures know what's happening and what will continue to be a tradition in this part of the world. 

Calypso

Calypso is a type of music that arose in the 17^th century in Trinidad and Tobago. In its earliest stages it was a way of communication between African slaves working on French sugar plantations in the Caribbean. They were not allowed to talk to each other, so they used calypso to communicate and mock their masters instead. Most of these calypsos were sung in French Creole by a groit. These were individuals who were responsible for keeping an oral history of their tribe or village.

However, now there is a more modern version of calypso that began in the 19^th century as a mix of contrasting elements such as the masquerade song lavway, French Creole belair and the calinda stick-fighting chantwell. And its increasing popularity was heavily connected to the adoption of Carnival by the slaves, including canboulay drumming and the music masquerade processions.

Calypso is an Afro-Caribbean style of music that is very rhythmic and uses a lot of various percussion instruments and even banjos and guitars. Typically, the lyrics of a calypso are highly political but in a very careful and structured way due to strict censorship.

Below is a recording of calypso music which, along with steel-pan bands, is the kind of music traditionally exhibited during the Notting Hill Carnival.