Literally!
And so for example if the carnival now moves to Hyde Park do you feel that will change the vibe in any way? It would change the dynamic of it, but people will have to understand you know, black people need to understand. It’s like tough love, It ain’t their carnival. London is a multicultural city now. When my parents first came here in the 50’s we were a little black ghetto and we lived within 200 yards of this space (Portobello Road) and it has now evolved into everyone’s carnival who lives in, works in and visits London. It’s still underpinned by the Afro Caribbean experience which is right and proper, but it’s great that we got input from the Portuguese community here now, Brazilian samba and all that going on, indigenous African costumes and dance going on. Again, it plays truth to my philosophy about mixing up performing arts.
It sometimes seems like less black people are going to Carnival. There’s not less black people going. If you go down the Southern end it’s spot the white face. Come up our end to Good Times and it’s more international and mixed, which took a long time to generate. It’s safer, we’ve got more
girls, It’s less intimidating, and I’ve known for years people wanted to come to carnival but the negative publicity that surrounds it and the stigma that is attached to it, you think, hmm nah I don’t think so. Even now because middle England and the media do enough to scare people away. They’ve invested interest in trying to close it by scare mongering.
Every year we hear Carnival’s closing down, it’s the last carnival. You must hear that quite often. There’s an element of truth to that. Carnival seems to muddle its way through and go on with the event, even though there’s no money, no resources and every year the funding gets reduced or cut, I don’t know how we go on but we do. It’s the only place on the Earth that allows a festival this size to take place in what are essentially Victorian streets. When other countries don’t have one, don’t allow that, can’t cope. When it was 100 people in 1959 they hired one little truck, because carnival has been going on since 1959 not 1964, 1964 was kind of like the first street procession here, carnival has been going since 1959 in Camden Town Hall. Don Letts has just made a wicked documentary about Carnival’s history, and the story he tells gives due credit to all the original people that started it, the black lawyer that gave her name to it, who sadly