iNTRODUCING ONE OF MY FIRST LOVES…
I love Carnival. I think it’s probably fair to say that I always have. My very first childhood memory from the early 80s is of the smells and sounds of Notting Hill Carnival, we lived right in the middle of it, just off Ladbroke Grove. After we moved away I attended various others in the cities we lived, St Paul’s in Bristol, Butetown in Cardiff, Handsworth in Birmingham and when I was old enough to make my own pilgrimage back to Notting Hill, I rarely missed a year.
Carnival gives you wings! (Port Of Spain, Trinidad 2019)
I am of course talking about a specific type of Carnival. In the UK we have many other kinds, such as the Ryde Carnival on the Isle Of Wight which has been running since 1887, or the Bridgewater Guy Fawkes Carnival which claims to go back even earlier, to the 17th century days of the man himself, but for me Carnival means: sound systems; playing mas; dancing in the streets; food stalls serving up curry goat, rice & peas, jerk chicken and all manor of other spice and stodge; people forgetting their differences or disputes, and throwing off all the pressures of the year for one almighty bacchanal. For me the Caribbean carnivals which arrived here with the passengers of the HMS Windrush back in the 1950s have been all this and more and hold a very special place in my heart, however 2019 was the first time I managed to go direct to the source and hit up Carnival in Trinidad & Tobago (for my stag do no less - you can read more about that trip here).
Me, Nilkesh & Dregz playing Mas with the Showtime band
It wasn’t just my love of Carnivals that took me to Trinidad & Tobago of course, I had very nearly opted for my groomsman’s first suggestion of Rio de Janeiro, and I will 100% make it to at least one of the Brazilian Carnivals one day (not to mention that other epic pre-Lenten favourite, Mardi Gras in New Orleans), but much as I love Samba, I’m a bonafide Soca fanatic, so when it came to following the music (as I usually do), there was only one real choice for that time of year. Also, it has to be said, there really is no better fuel than Soca when you’ve got days of partying out ‘on the road’ to contend with, including the many gruelling hours marching through the sun drenched streets playing mas! You need as much energy as you can muster and believe me 160 BPMs of sub bass, electronic rhythms and raw call and response Dancehall style vocals will get you through every time. I learned this first thanks to following the floats at Notting Hill in the 90s but Port Of Spain gave me a whole new level of appreciation for this fact. In the words of Benjai’s’ ‘Phenomenal’…
“Soca does give me my powers”.
Of course Power Soca is just one sound you will hear out there, and anybody who has listened to our Super Soca Show on Saturday afternoons will know many different stylistic subdivisions exist within the Soca family, but even the softest most subtle of the strain has an energy that is hard to ignore and the sheer celebration of life that runs through it all connects deeply to the very heart and soul of Carnival. Which is why over the next few days, on what would have been Trinidad & Tobago Carnival weekend, had the whole world not been brought to a stand still through the spread of this deadly virus, I will be sharing a little more about my love for Soca music and this year’s celebrations which have had to move online. Hopefully if you’re going to catch anything at all this year, it will be the same bacchanalian bug for it that I have.
