August 20 - The Sounds of Many Happy Multi-cultural Memories

We at Ostrich would like to offer our thanks to Poppy from Active Minds for writing this guest blog on how reminiscing about historical events can have a positive impact on the lives of people suffering from dementia. Poppy also explores the history of the Notting Hill Carnival and why it holds so many memories for so many people!

Since the birth of Active Minds over three years ago, the demand for activity products appropriate for people living with dementia has risen. And along with this change in demand, there has also been a change in requirements, especially in regards to products that aid reminiscence.

Existing reminiscence products include the wonderfully designed and unique Many Happy Returns 1940s and 1950s boxes of reminiscence cards, which offer everyday images, information of times past and conversational prompts for enjoyable conversations and reminiscing.

But recently we have been receiving more and more requests from the general public and care services up and down the country for reminiscence cards and resources reflecting the 1960s.

Although we might see historical events as a good place to start an adventure into a past memory, in actual fact it is often the case that the more personal the adventure is, the more therapeutic the reminiscing is, and historical events don’t always offer up that walk down memory lane - I'm more likely to remember a sensual or emotive memory, like the sound of my cat’s bell jingling as it runs down the stairs of my house to greet me at the front door when I walk in from work each day, than I am to remember a historical one such as ‘On this day the first official Royal baby portrait was taken by Kate Middleton’s dad’.

But, just sometimes, heavily historical events can also offer all sorts of sensory opportunities for a good ol’ dance down memory lane. And one in particular comes to mind when looking to the 60s for frames of reminiscence reference.

The Notting Hill Carnival

In its 47th year this weekend, Notting Hill Carnival is not only a huge historical footprint on 1960s memory lane; it also has been a source of so many different sensual and emotional memories, for so many nationalities and backgrounds, for so many years. And, it continues to be passed down from generation to generation.

Notting Hill Carnival has a history and geography much wider than its W8 roots. Journalist and political activist Claudia Jones, a Trinidadian who had come to London via Harlem, New York founded the West Indian Gazette in Brixton, South London in 1958 and, as a response to the 1958 race riots, she launched a Caribbean celebration in the form of a carnival, just like the one held in the Port-of-Spain, back on her birth turf in Trinidad.

The start of what later became the Notting Hill Carnival took place in winter, at around the same time at its Trinidadian sister carnival, and indoors at St. Pancras Town Hall, in Camden, North London on 30th January 1959.

Edric Connor, a singer and actor, and the first black actor to appear in a Royal Shakespeare Company production, and Stanley Jack, a talented Trinidadian dancer who had only just arrived in London months before, were invited by Jones to direct and choreograph the event. Over a thousand people turned up to join in with the party. The hall had been decked out in the colours of the Caribbean and filled with comrades in costume and the sounds of Calypso - the likes of jazz guitarist Fitzroy Coleman and Calypsonian singer-songwriter, trumpeter, bassist and drummer Fitzgerald Henry, aka Mighty Terror who sang a song he had especially composed for the occasion. Edric Conner’s The Southlanders vocal group performed and there were songs from the wonderfully named, Sepia Serenaders and last but not least, Errol Phillips and the Trinidad Humminbirds steel band went on to steal the show.

Continuing through the times

The success of the first carnival meant that by the second year, bigger premises were needed and the event moved to Seymour Hall, behind Marble Arch in Central London. But even at 2,000 capacity the hall was still not large enough, and so in 1961 carnival moved again to the Lyceum Ballroom just of the Strand.

When Jones passed away in 1964 the carnival metamorphosed once more:

In the same year of Jones’ death, social worker and community activist, Rhaunne Laslett, a woman of Native American descent, started a street party for local children in Ladbroke Grove. The children, a mix of English, Polish, African, Irish, Russian, Portuguese and West Indian, were entertained by street performers and The Russell Henderson Steel Band, led by Russ Henderson who had grown up in the Port-of-Spain and had travelled to London originally to study piano tuning. Russ, with his mobile steel band, completely unprompted, decided to take his music 'walkies', and without really knowing what his actions would eventually result in, the street party turned into a procession. As Russ himself recalls, “The police didn't know what to do, so they just let us get on with it and I kept telling them ‘Oh it’s alright, we’re just going to the next corner and then we’ll be back”.  And such a success it was that it was repeated year after year.  

By 1968 the sounds of the Notting Hill Carnival procession reflected a true mix of cultures featuring the mod band The Action, Ginger Johnson and the Afro-Cubans and Pure Medicine. A pre-Carnival Roundhouse benefit gig for Rhaune Laslett’s Neighbourhood Service on Tavistock Crescent featured acts such as the Small Faces, Sly and the Family Stone and, some way down the bill, David Bowie.

By year four, it had found its place in history as the Notting Hill Carnival. Jones’s comrades had become involved and the street procession developed into the Caribbean-centred, but vastly multi-cultural carnival that it still is to this day.

With this in mind, this weekend, Active Minds wishes you Many Happy Returns to the origin of the Notting Hill Carnival and to a variety of sixties sounds that hold so many memories, for so many people.