{"id":69512,"date":"2018-08-25T16:52:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T16:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=69512"},"modified":"2018-08-25T19:29:07","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T19:29:07","slug":"notting-hill-carnival-micha-frazer-carroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/notting-hill-carnival-micha-frazer-carroll\/","title":{"rendered":"Patties and police: the changing face of Notting Hill Carnival"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gal-Dem’s art and culture editor, Micha Frazer-Carroll, shares her shifting experience of London’s biggest Caribbean celebration over the years<\/p>","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4568,10172,10897],"tags":[3905,141,5519],"class_list":["post-69512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-film","category-opinion","tag-culture","tag-london","tag-notting-hill-carnival"],"acf":{"main_category":10897,"legacy":false,"hero_title":"","subtitle":"Gal-Dem's art and culture editor, Micha Frazer-Carroll, shares her shifting experience of London's biggest annual Caribbean celebration over the years","hero":{"video":false,"image":false,"header_color":"black","overlay_color":"","overlay_text_color":"black"},"teasers":{"video":false,"image":false,"width":"6","proportion":"default"},"facebook_image":false,"related_articles":"","next_article":[69472],"content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

\u201cI\u2019m gonna go get a Jamaican patty!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Annoyingly, it\u2019s cold and rainy this August. My tassled crop top is soaked with rainwater, my hair is out, and the air is saturated with weed and sweat. Lily Allen is on stage, but we can\u2019t hear her because the rain blew out the sound system. My white friends walk over to the food stall.\u00a0I hadn\u2019t known or realised that patties were Jamaican at all \u2014 the only place I\u2019d ever eaten them was at Nanny\u2019s house. <\/span><\/p>\n

Founded in 1966, Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event that graces August bank holiday weekend, on the streets of west London, of all places.\u00a0<\/span>The way I see it now, w<\/span>hen I was a child, <\/span>Carnival was a chance to interact with my culture\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 it was something I went to on the weekend that I wouldn\u2019t bother explaining on the Tuesday when I came back to my majority-white school.\u00a0<\/span>From what I remember, it was about blackness: we\u2019d wear red, green and black bandanas and whistles, and eat the food we usually only saw at home on the table. <\/span><\/p>\n

But my impression of Carnival is also scattered; I was too young to think much about racial dynamics when I used to go, and I stopped going for most of my teen years \u2014\u00a0it wasn\u2019t on my radar:\u00a0house parties were. I was 19 when my white friends started asking if I wanted to come along to Carnival. I was confused. When did it become cool? Or did white people always go? As a result of this, my image of Carnival is that it\u2019s seen the effects of gentrification, and perhaps its cultural counterpart: appropriation. But I\u2019m not sure, because I my attendance hasn\u2019t been consistent, and my memories of the event from childhood are hazy. I asked my mother to gauge what she thought.<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":"Carnival in Antigua, 1979. Courtesy of Micha Frazer-Carroll"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

The first thing I was interested in was whether Carnival was an event she saw as an intrinsic part of our culture, something she had ownership over, or whether it had actually always been an event highly attended by white people. Why did she take me? Was it just a fun day out, or was it about culture and history?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what we do. I wanted my children to see what we do.\u201d Mum is staunch in her tone. She told me that her mother had taken her every year without fail, and all of her West Indian friends would go too. It was a predominantly black-attended event. \u201cMy English friends didn\u2019t go. They would have no interest in it. Whatsoever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

My Nanny, my mum\u2019s mum, wanted my mum to see what happens in the West Indies. Mum keeps saying \u201cwhat we do\u201d, and I think that\u2019s vital \u2014 it touches on a concern of so many immigrant families. How do you raise your child with a sense of their background and culture in a majority-white society? This way, at least, something is annually scheduled in.<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

The sound of steel pans is nostalgic for me. My mum says that her next door neighbour growing up on Brooke Road, in Clapton, was the only steel pan producer in the UK. We always had kids\u2019 steel pans knocking around the house, with the notes painted on them in primary colours. An important part of Carnival for Nanny was giving my mum an opportunity to listen to them. That characteristic was the most memorable part of Carnival in Antigua \u2014 my mum tells me there was a carnival on every island, which I never knew. At Carnival in the UK, there are warehouses that you can go into and watch dancers perform to calypso music. \u201cBut in the West Indies, they\u2019re football stadiums,\u201d Mum explained. It\u2019s an event on a different scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

The houses in Notting Hill are tall and white, with pillars. Mum says that back in the ’70s she\u2019d wander down the side roads and sometimes the homes, which would house up to six or seven working-class black families, would open their doors and the kids and parents would come down and sit on the steps. \u201cI felt really privileged, because after a day of walking around, if we were feeling tired, we could just go upstairs to mum\u2019s friends\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Carnival was one of the only places mum could hear her music. \u201cThe only other place I could hear it was David Rodigan, between 12:00 and 15:00 on a Sunday.\u201d She recites this like it\u2019s imprinted on her brain. If they were going out, her friends and family would try to get home for that time so they could hear it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But for one weekend, on the streets, you could hear reggae, dub, soul, lovers rock. Mum says there weren\u2019t even clubs you could go to to hear \u201cblack music\u201d; it was still the days of blues parties<\/span><\/a>, which were essentially parties where Caribbean people would host their own informal, illegal, club nights in their living rooms or basements. So Carnival was very special for her \u2014 the freedom of being able to dance around in the streets, seeing and buying Caribbean food.<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

Last summer I decided not to go. In the middle of a bout of anxiety, I had a weird feeling something bad was going to happen.\u00a0<\/span>It turned out that acid was in fact thrown on five people in a crowd, and reported on widely. There\u2019s coverage like this every year, although I\u2019m unsure of whether, in reality, violence is widespread or at levels that are to be expected at any big event or festival. It\u2019s no secret that people use drugs there, but it\u2019s also no secret that people use them at Glastonbury. But the demographic is different, so the way we report on it and talk about it is different too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Riots started happening at Carnival in the ’70s. \u201cI think that must\u2019ve been \u201979,\u201d my mum recalls.\u201cI remember walking down Ladbroke Grove with my mum, and seeing the big bags of bottles that people had laid down, so that when the police \u2014\u00a0<\/span>[she says in a West Indian accent] Babylon\u00a0<\/i><\/span>\u2014 came down the street, people could get them and throw them at them. They were upset about the way that things were being cordoned off.\u201d Now Carnival is riddled with more bureaucracy and organisation: it has permits, barriers, and designated routes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Violence at Carnival is often discussed as if it\u2019s something inherent to Caribbean people, or black people, but the way Mum relays people\u2019s reactions to it, it sounds as if it was symptomatic of the structures, and climate, of the UK. The older people, first generation immigrants, stopped going. She puts on my Nanny\u2019s thick Antiguan accent: \u201cMi cyaan ron [I can\u2019t run]. Mi not going dose kinda places \u2014 you don\u2019t get dat in the West Indies.\u201d This year, for the first time, there will be metal detectors, with the aim of curbing knife crime.<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

Attending Carnival, it\u2019s important to think about how it\u2019s changing, and how we participate in those changes. Post-Windrush scandal, it\u2019s a sacred space. I\u2019m cautious of the images we\u2019ve seen of older Caribbean people on the news since the scandal broke, who have won the sympathy of a large part of the general public \u2014 elderly people with gentle West Indian accents addressing the camera from cosy living rooms with net curtains. But Caribbean boys are still largely negatively portrayed in the media around Carnival weekend, and I\u2019d argue more so than young white boys. A focus on violence is fuelled by racism, and it\u2019s important to be conscious of who we collectively allow to have fun without criticism<\/span>, and whose fun we demonise.<\/span><\/p>\n

At its heart, it\u2019s a weekend where we as Caribbean people get to be ourselves and embrace our history. Historically our culture and heritage has been scrambled for, erased, controlled, and regulated, but this weekend we get to reclaim and showcase it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mum thinks that Nanny described it best. \u201cIt\u2019s jussa joyful time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This year’s Notting Hill Carnival<\/a> runs from August 26th-27th.<\/em><\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\nPatties and police: the changing face of Notting Hill Carnival Patties and police: the changing face of Notting Hill Carnival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/notting-hill-carnival-micha-frazer-carroll\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Patties and police: the changing face of Notting Hill Carnival Patties and police: the changing face of Notting Hill Carnival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gal-Dem's art and culture editor, Micha Frazer-Carroll, shares her shifting experience of London's biggest Caribbean celebration over the years\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/notting-hill-carnival-micha-frazer-carroll\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-08-25T16:52:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-08-25T19:29:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Micha Frazer-Carroll\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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