1. Commercial sponsors have provided funding for individual elements of the carnival in the past, and the Arts Council of Great Britain (now of England) has supported the event as a whole, but it seems that these are qulitatively and quantitively different from a commercial titled sponsorship of the whole event.

2. From a poster outside the carnival headquarters, quoted in The Times, 31 August 1976.

3. See Clarke, John, ‘Style’, in Resistance through Rituals, ed. Hall, Stuart and Jefferson, Tony (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 175–91Google Scholar; and Gottdeiner, Mark, ‘Hegemony and Mass Culture: a Semiotic Approach’, American Journal of Sociology, XC, No. 5 (1985), p. 979–1001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For Example, Fiske, John, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)Google Scholar.

5. There was in fact a small local celbration based upon a more traditionally English model in existence in the area prior to this date; however, 1966 was when the carnival as we know it today took embryonic form.

6. Cohen, Abner, Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements (Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 13Google Scholar.

7. large, static PA systems, located in the side streets around the processional route and playing a variety of musical styles. Individual sound systems will often have a specific repertorie and sometimes a loyal following. They are largely based on Jamaican traditions.

8. For a full analysis, see Pyrce, Everton, ‘Culture from Below: Politics, Resistance, and Leadership in the Notting Hill Gate Carnival: 1976–1978’, in Black Politics in Britain, ed. Goulbourne, Harry (Aldershot; Vermont: Avebury, 1990), p. 130–48Google Scholar.

9. Hewison, Robert, The Heritage Industry (London: Methuen, 1990), p. 136Google Scholar.

10. Claire Holder, interview with the author, London, 25 May 1996.

11. Pryce, op. cit., p. 132.

12. In the main, information regarding the history of the carnival has been drawn from ?Abner Cohen, Masquerade Politics, op. cit., to which the reader is referred. See also , Pryce, op. cit., and The Road Make to Walk on Carnival Day (LOndon: Race Today Collective, 1977)Google Scholar.

13. Cohen, op. cit., p 4.

14. There have of course been examples of moderately didactic mas presentation, but these constitute the exception rather than the rule.

15. Alleyne-Dettmers, Patricia, ‘Ancestral Voices: Trevini – a Case of Meta-Maskingin the Notting Hill Carnival’, The Journal of Material Culture, III, No. 2 (1998), p. 202Google Scholar.

16. Beckerman, Brnard, ‘Spectcle in Theatre’, Theatre Survey, XXV (05 1984), p. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beckerman uses the examples of a hero returning to a city (p.6). The display that may accompany the entrance (fireworks, music, etc.) may not in itself be meanigful until associated with the deeds of the hero and the welcome of their return; and the more wonder that is generated by the pyrotechnic spectacle surrounding the parade, the more wonder is invested in the hero.

17. Holder, op. cit.

18. The Mangrove Restaurant was a cultural centre for West Indians in the area and was the spiritual home of the carnival.

19. Owusu, Kwesi, ‘Notting Hill Carnival’, Stroms of the Heart, ed. Owusu, Kweski (London: Camden Press, 1988), p. 239–52Google Scholar.

20. Hobson, Will and Tuckey, Bill, The Touch Guide to the Notting Hill Carnival 1996 (London: Touch Magazine in association with Time Out, 1996)Google Scholar.

21. I should qulify this, in so far as the meanings of many of these mas themes are not obvious to those outside the carnival community; they evoke rather than describe their meanings, and even so are not transparent.

22. Alleyne-Dettmers, op. cit., p. 205.

23. Ibid.

24. Truner, Victor, Dramas, Fields, and, Metaphors (Thaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1974), p, 37–42Google Scholar. Turner proposes that social drama is constituted by a four-stage process: breach, crisis, redressive action, reincorporation.

25. Eco, Umberto, ‘Frames of Comic Freedom’, in Carnival, ed. Eco, , Ivanov, , and Rector, (The Hague: Mouton, 1984), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Holder, op. cit.

27. Schechner, Richrd, The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance (New York; London: Routledge, 1993), p. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Race Today Collective, op. cit., p. 9.

29. Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986)Google Scholar.

30. Interestingly, in the mid ‘nineties’ London witnessed a number of ‘street parties’ fenerated from an entirely political perspective; these parties forced road closures in order to reclaim control of daily lives from the market system and to challange the environmentally suspect emphasis on road use.

31. Communitas and structure are terms used by Turner, Victor in The Ritual Process (London: Routledge, 1969), p. 94–130Google Scholar. The former refers to the spontaneous. of-the-moment, and shifting sense of community or shared experience developed within such events, and the structure is the organizing principle of the wider social context.

32. Holder, op. cit.

33. Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performace (London; New York: Routlkedge, 1992), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where the author proposes that ‘to have any hope of changing its audience a performer must somehow connect with that audience's ideology’.

34. Quoted in Smith, Julia Llewellyn, ‘Facing the Music’, The Times, 27 08 1993, p. 13Google Scholar.

35. Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (London: Routledge, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar.

36. Quoted in Smith, op. cit.

37. Gutzmore, Cecil, ‘The Notting Hill Carnival’, Marxism Today, 08 1982, p. 31–3Google Scholar.

38. ‘it was a controversial move which split the governing bodies and carnival aficionados. Calls of selling out and fears that “wit'ing” was being signed away were intense’. See Dianne Regisford, ‘Carnival Stylee’, in the e-zine YUSH Ponline, I, No. 7 http://www.leevalley.co.uk/yush/rewind/yush0107/carnival.htm.

39. Kershaw, op. cit., p. 73.

40. There have been plans to include Hyde Park in the processional route, but the organizers deny any intention of wholly relocating the carnival there.

41. Chaney, David, Fictions of Collective Life (London; New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 19Google Scholar.

42. The deliciously ironic connotations of Virgin are equally at odds with the carnal pleasures of carnival, although in this case the company did not request a named sponsorship.

43. See McMillan, Micheal, ‘The Carnival’, in Live Art, ed. Ayres, Robert, Butler, David (Sutherland: AN Publications, 1991), p. 28–32Google Scholar., 35; Pryce, op. cit.; and Alleyne-Detmers, op. cit., p. 208.

44. Furthermore, Brason – or to be more accurate, our perception of Brason – embodies similar tensions to those operating in carnival. His balancing act is to sustain an image (and substance)of caring capitalism, to make enterprise look responsible, fun, and almost charitable. Brason, who once published the Sex Pistols infamous ‘God Save the Queen’ on his Virgin record label, has more recently been involved in more mainstream projects at the heart of the new-look Britain. Like the carnival, his history seems to have been one of reconciling idealism and even radicalism within a capitalist, commodity, and image-oriented context. Virgin Atlantic's sponsorship of the carnival may have lasted only one year, but in some ways the partnership seems quite apt.

45. Blair, M. Elizabeth, ‘Commercialization of the Rap Music Youth Subculture’, Journal of Popular Culture, XXVII, No. 3 (1993), p. 21–34; Clark, op. cit.; Gottdeiner, op. citCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. During the time of the List sponsorship, a number of television advertising campaingns made use of carnival imagery. In the main these were for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and for a make of car. Generally the advertisements suggesated that the product would turn the consumer's life into a carnival. another example of the use of festive events in promotion could be seen in some of the Christmas lights in Regent Street in 1998, which read: ‘Tis the season to get Tando'd’ promoting another carbonated fruit drink, and perhaps gently alluding to the close relationship that Coca-Cola has maintained with Christmas imagery.

47. Stam, Robert, ‘MIkhail Bakhtin and Left Cultural Critique’, in Posrmodernism and its Discontents, ed. Kaplan, Ann (New York and London: Verso, 1998), p. 137Google Scholar.

48. Wernik, Andrew, Promotional Culture: Advertising Idealogy, and Symbolic Expression (London: Sage Publications, 1991), p. 35Google Scholar.

49. Ibid., p. 23.

50. Pope, Steve, ‘Hague's Carnival Caper Makes Us Blacks Feel Sick’, The Guradian, 27 08 1997, p 17Google Scholar.

51. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, trans. Feeney, Mary, Carnival in Romans (New York: Brazillier, 1979), p. 190Google Scholar.

52. Downes, Louise, ‘Windlashed Carnival Warms Spirits’, The Guardian, 31 08 1992, p. 5Google Scholar.

53. Wernick, op. cit., p. 188.

54. McMillan, op. cit., p. 30.

55. Ibid.

56. The Times, 28 August 1989, p. 1.

57. The full list of such articles from The Times is far too long for inclusion. However, the following provides a fair indication of the trend: 30 Augusr 1976, p. 2; 31 August 1976, p. 1, 2; 1 September 1976, p. 1, 12; 30 August 1982, p. 1; 31 August 1982, p. 2; 1 September 1982, p. 3, 9; 1 September 1987, p. 1; 2 September 1987, p. 1, 10, 11; 20 August 1989, p. 4; 29 August 1989, p. 1; 17 August 1992, p. 8; 1 September 1992, p. 1; 2 September 1992, p. 5.

58. It is notable that until 1975, when there was one article and one photograph, The Times remained silent about the carnival. However, in 1976 there were thirtynine separate pieces, sixty in 1977, and forty-eight in 1988. The coverage is fullest in the year after any violent confrontation, and the overwhelming majority of these articles, written before the event, report on how the organizers and the police are convinced that the situation will be better in the forthcoming event.

59. Nelson, Steve, ‘Walt Disney's EPCOT and the World Fair Performance Tradition’, The Drama Review, XXX (1986), p. 106–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Pryce, op. cit.

61. Ibid., p. 146.

62. For example, See the discussions in Blair, op. cit.; Rose, Tricia, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, New Hampshire: Weslyan, 1993), p. 17Google Scholar; Thornton, Sarah, ‘Moral Panic: the Media and British Rave Culture’, in Microphone Fiends, ed. Ross, Andrew, Rose, Tricia (London; New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 176–92Google Scholar.

63. McMillan, op. cit., p. 32.

64. Hobson, op. cit., p. 54.

65. For a more developed illustration, see Street, John, Rebel Rock: the Politics Music (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 219–21Google Scholar.

66. Hebdige, Dick, ‘Reggae, Rastas, and Rudies’, in Resistance Through Rituals, ed. Hall, Stuart, Jefferson, Tony (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 147Google Scholar.

67. Bakhtin, Mikhail, trans. iswolsky, Helen, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), p. 109Google Scholar.

68. The Devil's Advocate, Folio Productions for Channel Four, produced by Thompson, Charles, 6 09. 1995Google Scholar.

69. Stallybrass, op. cit., p. 15.

70. Cohen, op. cit., p. 130.