{"id":2784,"date":"2010-08-30T17:08:07","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T21:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=2784"},"modified":"2010-08-30T18:07:14","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T22:07:14","slug":"carnival-craziness-in-notting-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/08\/carnival-craziness-in-notting-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Carnival Craziness in Notting Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What a difference four days makes! After walking the same streets around Notting Hill Station with relative ease during the first day of our program, I found myself attempting to move among hoards of people making their way to the Notting Hill Carnival. Above this text, you should see a side-by-side of the same street on the two different days, and hopefully you can see the incredible difference in the atmosphere. Not only were the streets much more crowded, but they were populated quite differently. While I found almost exclusively older, upper-class Caucasians on my first trip to the area, today I found a young crowd of great racial and economic diversity. Those that currently live here (and, apparently, have only moved here recently in what has become a gentrification of the area) seemed to not exactly gel with the carnival. One of the first things I noticed walking to the carnival was how many buildings were boarded up, just for the weekend. All of these boards, and I mean all of them, were already covered with graffiti (and they could not have been up for more than 3 days). I wonder if this graffiti was a sign of animosity between the carnival-goers and the new, wealthier, inhabitants of Notting Hill.<\/p>\n

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The Carnival itself was influenced by Afro-Caribbean culture. From the jerk-chicken stands to the booming reggae music, one could easily see this influence. Having visited a market in a Caribbean neighborhood earlier in the week, I found the differences in the atmosphere between the two quite interesting. The slow, charming pace of the market was completely different from the sensory overload on display at the Carnival. People were yelling, pushing, blowing vuvuzuelas, and partying to their hearts content. There was no discernable pattern to what was going on; it was just 3 square miles of chaos. Trash lined the streets (has anyone else noticed the overall lack of trash bins in London?) while signs of drugs were everywhere. While the music, food, and floats were certainly a sign of Afro-Caribbean culture, I felt, from my vantage point, that many in attendance were simply there to mindlessly, and dangerously, party. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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According to the website for the carnival (http:\/\/www.thenottinghillcarnival.com\/history.html<\/a>) , the festivities originated as a celebration of Caribbean culture, and was rooted in Trinidadian celebrations over the abolition of slavery. While this was originally\u00a0intended as a moment of unity for Caribbean immigrants, what I saw today felt more like a big London block party that happened to feature Caribbean entertainment and food. Many of those involved in the parade likely knew the history and gravity of the Carnival, but those in attendance did not seem to be there for either a cultural experience or for the original unity that the Carnival intended to be about. I am not suggesting one way of looking at the Notting Hill Carnival is necessarily better. One can be there to revel in the history and culture, or one can be there to party (within reason, in my opinion). It is just interesting to me that there appears to be a shift in perspective of the event over the forty years since it began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 What a difference four days makes! After walking the same streets around Notting Hill Station with relative ease during the first day of our program, I found myself attempting to move among hoards of people making their way to the Notting Hill Carnival. Above this text, you should see a side-by-side of the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6688],"tags":[6704,6708,1017],"class_list":["post-2784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-andrew","tag-notting-hill","tag-afro-caribbean","tag-notting-hill-carnival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}