Notting Hill Carnival is the most popular place to be on what the British call August Bank Holiday Monday. Millions are drawn to Europe's greatest street festival to look at the bands (groups) of mas players, masqueraders (costumed dancers) dressed in every imaginable colour of the artistic palette mashing down de Grove ( dancing on the streets) of Ladbroke Grove as they wend their way to the parade route.
The stage is set for Carnival.
This is Carnival as we all know it. All the ingredients are present: there is the masquerade (the collective ritual celebration), public space transformed into a theatrical stage to play the mas (actual enactment of that costume) through kinesics/dance, mime, and specific gestures to tell a specific story; there is the mas itself (costumes) and music to create the extravagantly devised spectacle.
Every masquerade band has a specific theme. The mas man/woman (a carnival, creative artist) aims to depict a specific idea through the specially designed mas (the costume). Designs, however, do not simply occur. Each designer has an artistic repertoire: a range of possible and permissible ideas.
Carnival, mas and its accompanying Carnival Arts celebrate life in a very sophisticated, highly artistic way.
Here we are not looking at a generic Carnival. We are looking at a historical and culturally specific model, which has its origins not only in the African traditions that were transported to the Caribbean but also in the European traditions brought by the various colonizers.
This Carnival - from which Notting Hill and other Carnivals across Britain evolved - has its origins specifically in Trinidad & Tobago. It was transported to this country by economically marginalized peoples who migrated to Britain seeking a better life.
Today, Carnival is continually evolving. The traditional Trinidadian form now reflects the social and political experiences of Afro-Caribbean people in Britain.
The stage is set for Carnival.
This is Carnival as we all know it. All the ingredients are present: there is the masquerade (the collective ritual celebration), public space transformed into a theatrical stage to play the mas (actual enactment of that costume) through kinesics/dance, mime, and specific gestures to tell a specific story; there is the mas itself (costumes) and music to create the extravagantly devised spectacle.
Every masquerade band has a specific theme. The mas man/woman (a carnival, creative artist) aims to depict a specific idea through the specially designed mas (the costume). Designs, however, do not simply occur. Each designer has an artistic repertoire: a range of possible and permissible ideas.
Carnival, mas and its accompanying Carnival Arts celebrate life in a very sophisticated, highly artistic way.
Here we are not looking at a generic Carnival. We are looking at a historical and culturally specific model, which has its origins not only in the African traditions that were transported to the Caribbean but also in the European traditions brought by the various colonizers.
This Carnival - from which Notting Hill and other Carnivals across Britain evolved - has its origins specifically in Trinidad & Tobago. It was transported to this country by economically marginalized peoples who migrated to Britain seeking a better life.
Today, Carnival is continually evolving. The traditional Trinidadian form now reflects the social and political experiences of Afro-Caribbean people in Britain.
