From ‘old people music’ to owning the streets: 60 years of Notting Hill carnival and me

As a child, being taken to the Caribbean celebration was a drag. But once sound systems arrived in the 1970s, it became an unmissable yearly pilgrimage offering a sense of freedom My earliest memories of the Notting Hill carnival are of being mildly irritated. In its 1960s infancy, the event was strictly a Caribbean affair, transplanted to Ladbroke Grove as authentically as was practical. Its purpose was as obvious as its origins: giving Caribbean arrivals a chance to celebrate themselves by…