Feeling fruity ... A carnival dancer
gets into the spirit.
Photograph: Dan Chung
The bank holiday is almost upon us. Time to get dust off that feather-studded headdress and polish up those silky steelband skills.
This Sunday and Monday a large swath of West London is giving itself over to Europe's largest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival, and to help prepare for the occasion our experts on all things carnivalesque, Ruth Tompsett and Stephen Sparks, have put together a fantastic article on how to get the best out of carnival - where to go, what to listen out for, how best to dunk yourself in coloured flour. Definitely worth a read if you're one of the two million planning to head on down.
Webwise, Ruth and Stephen have also provided a list of super-handy links, from the official site to where to get the lowdown on soca music and sound systems. And if you want to dig a little deeper into the background of carnival, Gary Younge (nowadays the Guardian's man in New York) did an intriguing article on the subject a few years ago, while Stuart Hall has also written a great piece on the earliest days of calypso in Britain.
If you don't live near London or aren't able to make it, there's no reason to miss out on the weekend's festivities: BBC2 is broadcasting a special carnival documentary on Sunday evening, while the digital radio station 1Xtra is offering a fat 16 hours of carnival coverage through Monday.
And of course you're probably near something similar yourself: Carnivalnet lists other festivals from Derby to Kendal. And if you can't find something going in your postcode, you could always plug into some relevant sounds from the earliest days of carnival - a foot-tapping anthology, going under the name of London is the Place for Me 2, is just out from Honest Jon's.
