Drum Magazine Issue 5 | Page 70

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26/7/05

7:48 pm

Page 68

Drum: INSIGHT

“ We can’t expect people to support us in the old ways that we fought for, and we can’t even
intimidate them with the old Black Power, anymore. We have to find new ways to take back the
scene, if the Carnival is not to become a marginal, culturally defused festival.”

people to support us in the old ways that we fought
for, and we can’t even intimidate them with the old
Black Power, anymore.

Arts Comittee (CAC) position looks like it is proposing
to establish a special endowment fund for carnival
development?

“Where we goin’”

I’m not going to give answers – the answers lie with
you! Just as long as you remember that Carnival is a
living, contemporary thing – and knowing that
should prepare us for dealing imaginatively and
collaboratively with each other as carnivalists. Just as
long as you, the influential authorities, funders,
politicians, arts administrators and managers become
more passionately committed to this extraordinary
and evolving cultural invention – made in Britain.
Just as long as you, the mas people “play your mas”,
(and read me deep), “play your mas, for true”– in
the fullest spirit of your carnival tradition.

I want to try to finish now by dealing swiftly with the
question of where we goin’ with the carnival. This is
a question that might be better put to you as: “What
do you see yourselves doing, as mas makers and mas
players, in the immediate future?” ‘Is a big question,
ehn? ‘Is a big question, especially because we are
used to looking back when we stand up to defend
the rights of carnivalists. Now we have to look
ahead, as well. Traditions that are not self-nurturing
and internally dynamic die – or, at best they get kept
as ‘dead’ traditions, in festivals and museums.
So what is the answer to this last question – if the
carnival is not to become a marginal, culturally defused festival? What is the future aesthetically, that
is to say artistically and culturally for the carnival?
What is the future commercially and businesswise
for the carnival? What are the positions of the bigfunder authorities – what’s their game, and how do
we influence it? Should we be talking about a
‘foundation fund’ for Carnival – to ease the pressure
on going begging for funds year in year out? Should
we be encouraged by the fact that, coming off the
Mayor’s Carnival Review process, the new Carnival

Colin Prescod has been a resident of Ladbroke Grove / Notting Hill since
1958. He is currently Chair of the Institute of Race Relations, London, and
a member of the editorial working committee of the international journal,
Race and Class. He was founding-Chair, 1993-2001, of The Drum, Centre
for British Black Arts and Culture, Birmingham. He was a member of the
Mayor’s Notting Hill Carnival Review Group, 2001-2003, and is a member
of the Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage, 2003-2005. In
2004, he was appointed to the Learning Committee of the National
Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). Text taken
from a statement made to the Notting Hill Mas Bands Association annual
awards event, 2005.
Masada was Herod’s royal citadel and later the last outpost of Zealots
during the Jewish Revolt. The citadel was a site of the most dramatic and
symbolic act in Jewish history, where rebels chose mass suicide rather than
submit to Roman capture.
All photography © Newton U Brown