Drummers pound their way down the parade route at last year’s carnival. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Drummers pound their way down the parade route at last year’s carnival. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A group dances down the parade route at London's 2009 Notting Hill Carnival. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A group taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival dances down the parade route. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A Notting Hill Carnival parade participant greets the crowd from one of the parade's many floats. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Although the Notting Hil lCarnival has a Caribbean theme, it didn't stop this group from dressing up like Mozart's mistresses at the 2009 event. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Saturday is traditionally Children's Day at the Notting Hill Carnival, but that doesn't keep the little ones from participating in the parade on Monday where about 50,000 people participate in the festivities that draw more than 2 million people for the two-day event. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Dressed in a costume reminiscent of an Inca god, a participant in the Notting Hill Carnival parade looks out over the spectators from his float. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A flamboyantly dressed marcher shows her colors during the 2009 Notting Hill Carnival. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A group in costume dance and pose at London's Notting Hill Carnival. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A participant in the Notting Hill Carnival parade greets spectators as she passes by on the parade route. About 50,000 people participate in the festivities that draw more than 2 million people for the two-day event. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Dressed in Caribbean-inspired costumes, a group dances down the parade route during London's Notting Hill Carnival. What started as a local festival of the area's West Indian community, has grown into a big carnival, attracting more than 2 million spectators from all over the globe. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Caribbean- and Central American-influenced costumes are the dress of the day at London's two-day Notting Hill Carnival. This year's event is Aug. 29-30. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
The costumes of the parade participants of the Notting Hill Carnival in London be quite flamboyant. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
A Notting Hill Carnival participant, left, dances with a spectator along the parade route. What started as a local festival of the area's West Indian community it is now a big Caribbean carnival, with the sounds of Calypso and the smell of jerk chicken floating through the streets. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
There is really no escaping the crowds at the Notting Hill Carnival. However the later you go, the more crowded it becomes. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Most carnival celebrations take place in the winter, but there is one — and it is one of Europe’s biggest — that happens in the middle of summer. And in, of all places, England.
The Notting Hill Carnival started in the mid-1960s as a local festival for the area’s West Indian community, with reportedly about 400 people drawn into the street to listen to groups of steel drum musicians during the first celebration. At the time, Nottting Hill was not the genteel neighborhood of the Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant movie, but rather a rundown quarter, home to many Afro-Caribbean immigrants.
Today, while the look and makeup of the community has changed, for two days a year it is again a place to enjoy and celebrate the same things that the first carnival did. And it has gotten much bigger. The current version draws about 2 million participants and spectators for the August Bank Holiday weekend, Aug. 29-30 this year.
The events center on a joyous parade, nonstop music, street dancing, food and infectious fun. Monday is the big parade with festivities starting in the morning and lasting through the evening — although you really don’t have to get there until early to mid-afternoon. Sunday is Children’s Day, with a shorter parade route and fewer crowds. A steel drum competition on Saturday usually serves as a prelude to the official events.
Musicians, elaborate floats and masquerading denizens parade through the streets to the rhythm of steel bands, samba and calypso music, while DJs blast out reggae, hip-hop and drum ’n’ bass from stationary sound systems set up along the carnival route and local bands perform on stages. Spectators line the parade route or fill the areas around the sound systems.
Mingling with the sounds of the Caribbean are the aromas of its food. Jerk chicken, rice and peas, various curries and fried plantains are some of the food sold by vendors along the parade route, washed down with Jamaican Red Stripe beer or stronger Caribbean cocktails (think rum).
The parades have their roots in Caribbean masquerades, started, according to the carnival’s website, by freed slaves who did not want to be identified. The costumes in current parades are often flamboyant, always colorful and usually quite skimpy. Indeed, a visitor to the carnival shouldn’t be shocked to see a little near-nakedness now and then.
But the main point of the Notting Hill Carnival is to party, party, party and dance, dance, dance. And if the beats from the sound systems don’t get you going, the rhythms of the Caribbean will.
