Well because we only booked this trip a couple weeks ago we find ourselves with no costume (we know shock horror).
Tribe sell of months ago with most of the big bands such as Island people and harts following suit. We love our pretty mas and now we are hoping and praying for a Tribe costume. Island people are just not cutting it this year with those hard on the eye animal things.
Here is the ultimate Bnn survival kit which will prepare you for all eventualities.
Ibuprofen - drinking your moneys worth at all the inclusive fetes First aid kit - mash up toes or walking wounded Mosquito repellent - those bitches are not going to leave us with legs resembling a chocolate chip cookie Tampons - in case we have an accident Sewing kit - to fix your costume Plug adaptor
Well the countdown to Trini carnival is almost over, 3 days to go and we can't wait.
Here at Bnn HQ we love mas, fete and rum. We been wining in notting hill and all over the Caribbean, but its time for us to be carnival virgins and experience for the first time the Mecca that is Trinidad carnival.
We have done our homework
Booked our tickets
We have not got a direct flight so we flying Virgin to St Lucia than Liat to Trinidad
We couldn't believe it when we checked our email today. There in our inbox was a message accompanied by a photograph from the one and only ERYKAH BADU!!!!!
This message read:
Dear Nerds thank you for the T shirt and badges I am currently in Barbados having fun. I have been following you nerds at BNN for some time now and love your style, art and concept. So for the duration of my stay im gonna rock it NERD stylee as proof i have sent you a pic (please see below). Much love Erykah x
(ps.THIS IS NOT TRUE!!) 8-/..But it was a nice dream while it lasted. LOL
For the last couple of months we've been experimenting with making our own screens so we can be more experimental and flexible with print.
However never in a million years did we realise just how difficult it would be to expose a screen!!??!!..But yesterday at around 2pm we had a breakthrough!!...HOOOORAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BNN have been out and about at the V&A museum London and we stumble upon all things Crafty.
Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft brings together the work of eight contemporary artists who place craft at the heart of their practice: Olu Amoda, Catherine Bertola, Annie Cattrell, Susan Collis, Naomi Filmer, Lu Shengzhong, Yoshihiro Suda and Anne Wilson.
We were really liking the work of Nigerian creative Nerd Olu Amoda and his depiction of lagos using bits of metal such as nails.
This is Lagos 2002
Queen of the Night 2003
Other crafty folk we liked ...
'I move from weaving, to sound, to glass, to video and collaborative practices very liberally, rather than being defined by a specific way of making.'
Using textile techniques such as lace making, crochet and knitting Chicago artist Anne Wilson and her team created these delights
Topologies 2002
She also does video and sound installations Errant behaviours 2004
Catherine Bertola
'My work is about labour, investing time in a very ordinary material. I use daily domestic activities or chores such as vacuuming and dusting to make my work. The manual labour involved adds value to something that usually gets swept away.'
Bertola created a cutout of an existing wallpaper that used to be hung in the museum. With the use of the black patterned wallpaper and the contrasting white wall suggestively placed in corners to form a very striking 3d wall piece.
Everything and Nothing 2007
We loved the V&A for showing how everyday Ordinary became a delight of beauty and the best thing it is all free.
Katie Allen Friday October 19, 2007 Guardian Unlimited
The site allowed users to illegally download shows like Heroes
One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows. The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today.
A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.
Article continues
The arrest and the closure of the site - www.tv-links.co.uk - came during an operation by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police.
Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed.
Visitors to the site could get access to major feature films, sometimes within days of their initial cinema release. Recent links took users to illegal versions of the Disney/Pixar animation sensation Ratatouille as well as to most of this summer's blockbusters.
"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for Fact.
The group's director general Kieron Sharp said TV Links was the first major target in a campaign to crackdown on web piracy.
"The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.
Roger Marles, from Trading Standards said sites such as TV Links allowed people to break UK copyright law.
"The 'users' are potentially evading licence fees, subscription fees to digital services or the cost of purchase or admittance to cinemas to view the films," he added.
The British Video Association estimates that at least £459m was lost to the video, film and TV industries due to piracy in 2006.
We've just heard the best free download mixtape ever..EVER you hear! It includes original tracks mixed with their sampled dopplegangers. For example see our blog below "Aretha Franklin- One Step Ahead".
Track list: 01 - The Light - feat. Bobby Caldwell, Common 02 - Daytona 500 - feat. Bob James, Ghostface 03 - Cant Knock the Hustle - feat. Marcus Miller, Jay-Z 04 - Luchini - feat. Dynasty, Camp Lo 05 - Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See - feat. Seals and Croft, Busta Rhymes 06 - Get Money - feat. Sylvia Striplin, Junior Mafia 07 - Smooth Operator - feat. The Honey Drippers, Big Daddy Kane, Nas 08 - Sock it to Me - feat. The Delphonics, Missy Elliot 09 - Ms Fat Booty - feat. Aretha Franlkin, Mos Def 10 - Bonnie & Shyne - feat. Grace Jones, Shyne 11 - The Truth - feat. Harvey Mandel, Pharoahe Monch, Common, Talib Kweli 12 - Can I kick It - feat. Lou Reed, A Tribe Called Quest 13 - Memories Live - feat. Soft Machine, Reflection Eternal
For download click the link then go to LIFESTYLE and download: 90minutemaxelltapes
Bought to you by those generous peeps at IHMDJ! "I Hate My Day Job" they got some funky tees too (dont be shocked by the home page LOL!):http://www.ihmdj.com/index.html
Evian Cafun: mf doom is more interesting Niinoi Bossman: MF DOOM Melissa Martin: MF Doom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bosola. Ajenifuja: Mos def, I personally find him more accessible and he does movies not just music for heavens sakes the guy was in a hitch hikers guide to the galaxy! Yemi Black: I will have to say Mos Def. Peter Benhene-ocrah: Mos Def Oyindamola Fakeye: Def, its his swagger! Warsan Shire: I just saw them both perform at rock the bells california..and although DOOM is unexplainably gifted and takes HipHop lyrically to very imaginative places..MOS DEF has to be the choice, i heard travellin man when i was 13 yrs old, been in love ever since. Kimberly Trusty: I have to go with MF Doom, partially because he's getting no love here. He wears a mask. He references 70's & 80's cartoons. He has a song called "Accordion". I love accordions... Natalie Danielle Marshall: in some sense though, like Mr. Molit said, don't you think they are in two different leagues within the 'sub-genre' that they're placed in? In terms of 'acessibility' it is Mos, but Doom is good... but for me it is Mos... Ada Iye: def.. because i have no idea who doom is... *blushes* Alex Moitt: Looks like I'm in the minority with this choice but it has to be MF Doom. Mos Def is cool but Doom's really in a different league and Mos Def's last two albums weren't doing anyhting for me. Radha Blank: Mos....no question he's lyrically gifted but 'panties' was a bliss Richard Applewaithe: I gotta go with Mos espescially the early stuff with sean j period. If ya can huh you can hear all those tunes. Richard Applewaithe: I gotta go with Mos espescially the early stuff with sean j period. If ya can huh you can hear all those tunes. Rana Emerson: It's Mos. Cause he's soooo pretty! *runs and hides* Natalie Danielle Marshall: the mighty mos, black dante... Kofi Acheampong: Has to be doom "aqua teen hunger force!"
**************************************** Hotly debated. According to this Mos def is ahead?
Now that Grenada, Antigua Barbados, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad carnivals are out of the way London It's WE TIME.
In the beginning....
Claudia Jones the mother of Notting hill carnival
Perhaps this is the clue to Claudia Jones's role in the evolution of Carnival. Deported from America in the mid 1950's Claudia was sent to Britain, rather than to her native Trinidad where she had lived the first 8 years of her life. Her non stop advocacy forHuman rights, her prominence in a range of organisations that challenged inequality in the status quo (and particularly her membership of the Communist Party) made her 'a live and present danger' to the American state.After a year's imprisonment she was deported to England, the Mother Country of the colonized West Indian people.
Along with activists such as Amy Ashwood-Garvey (the wife of Marcus), Jones was central in defending London's black community. Understanding the unifying power of Carnival, she suggested London needed a similar festival.
The first indoor Carnival, held at the St Pancreas Town Hall in January 1959, was a masterstroke of Claudia's genius. Always aware of the power of Art and Culture to influence change, Claudia sought to reverse the disesteem, loneliness and alienation of Black people in Britain, people like herself who time and circumstance had washed up on foreign shores, far from their roots and origins. It was a response to the depressing state of race relations at the time; the UK's first widespread racial attacks (the Notting Hill race riots) had occurred the previous year.
In Notting Hill, the violence was especially vicious. A young West Indian carpenter named Kelso Cochrane was murdered there by six white youths.
In her childhood in Trinidad she had seen the power of Carnival to knit the many strands of a hugely diverse society in mass celebration. Here in EnglandCarnival could become a double edged sword, redeeming the pride of Black immigrants, while extending the hand of friendship to a 'stiff necked people', uneducated and misinformed about the culture of the darker races. As in its Caribbean roots, Carnival would embrace protest within Celebration, and replace conflict with understanding. It would express liberty and equality through its rituals of masquerade. Hers was a deeply humanising mission.
Rhaune Laslett. Laslett, who lived in Notting Hill, knew nothing of Jones or the carnivals when she spoke to the local police about organising a carnival early in 1965. With more of an English fete in mind, she invited the various ethnic groups of what was then the poor area of Notting Hill - Ukranians, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Caribbeans and Africans - to contribute to a week-long event that would culminate with an August bank holiday parade. Her motivation was "to prove that from our ghetto there was a wealth of culture waiting to express itself, that we weren't rubbish people".
Steel band player Russ Henderson was among those roped in. Laslett's partner, Jim O'Brien, knew him from the Colherne pub in Earl's Court - a favoured West Indian hang-out - and Henderson had played at the first event in St Pancras organised by Jones. At the Notting Hill event, he was playing alongside a donkey cart and a clown, and he felt things were getting flat. "I said, 'We got to do something to make this thing come alive.' " Henderson, , decided to walk his steel band to the top of the street and back. "People would ask, 'How far are you going?' and we'd say, 'Just back to Acklam Road' and they would come a little way with their shopping, then peel off and someone else would join in. There was no route, really - if you saw a bus coming, you just went another way."
By 1976 Notting hill carnival had changed . By that stage it had become a Caribbean event - the by-product of Jones's racial militancy and Laslett's community activism - complete with bands and costumes.
Black young people made their first massive and significant appearance at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1975, when for young people reggae was the idiom of cultural and social expression.
The Carnival organisers sought to accommodate this by installing sound systems playing reggae along the route of the procession as well as under the A40 fly-over. This cultural phenomenon became the heartbeat of carnival. According to police figures, carnival was attracting 150,000 people. It was also the first time most remember an imposing police presence.
In the following year of 1976, the riot took most people by surprise. "I just remember seeing these bottles flying," says Michael La Rose, head of the Association for a People's Carnival, which aims to protect and promote carnival's community roots; he describes it as like watching a relentless parade of salmon leaping upstream. The police were ill-equipped and ill-prepared. Defending themselves with dustbin lids and milk crates, they were also outmanoeuvred. "That whole experience made the police very sore," one policeman says. "They had taken a beating and were determined that it would not happen again, so when the next one came about, there was some desire for revenge."
From then on, thanks largely to the press, carnival moved from being a story about culture to one about crime and race. For years after, carnival stories would come with a picture of policemen either in hospital after being attacked or in an awkward embrace with a black, female reveller in full costume. Calls were made for the notting hill carnival to be banned.
As lord kitchener sang "The road made to walk on Carnival Day " and so we did. Notting hill carnival has become the biggest street party in Europe attracting over a 1,000 000 people the 3 days.
The FIVE DISCIPLINES OF CARNIVAL
Carnival tradition is based on these five elements. Together they give us the sounds and spectacular visuals that complete any carnival experience.
The 'Five Disciplines of Carnival' are:
1. MAS / COSTUME BANDS
Mas Bands (Mas is short for Masquerade) or Costume Bands is one of the five diciplines of Carnival. The competition for best Mas on the Road is hotly contested. On Carnival Monday the bands compete along the route and hope to pick up points as they pass the judgeing point.
2. STEELPAN
Notting Hill Carnival is the largest event showcasing the music and culture of Steelpan. The sound of Steelpanarrived in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />London in the early 50's when the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra came to celebrate the Festival of Britain. Steelband, as a twentieth century art-form grew side by side in popularity with Calypso. The BestSteelband is decided on Saturday at the annual panorama competition.
Mangrove steel Orchestra at panorama
3. SOUND SYSTEMS
Static Sound Systems have become an integral part of Notting Hill Carnival with the sounds of reggae, roots, soca, calypso and hip hop. There are around fifty Sound Systems that can be found on most roads within the route.
Rapage sound system
4. Carnival Floats There are about 100 floats that participate over the two days of Carnival. Carnival costumes, colours and sounds including steel pan, Calypso and Soca Sound Systems travel the route, taking up to 8 hours.
