JP Tell me something about your early memories of Carnival.

CS I was three years old. My mum put me in a costume, and I came third and I won a prize. That’s one of the earliest things that I remember. My parents always took part in carnival as well. As everybody does in Trinidad. And one day they were walking down the street, and they passed this bookshop, and they saw this image of my dad in this book. There’s something amazing about that picture. The joy.  And in the back, there is my mum. That costume sat under our bed for many years. And we used to be trying it on and stuff before we would go to Carnival.

Daddy mas image photographer Noel Norton from David Frost’s travel guide book on Trinidad and Tobago.

 We’d go to J’ouvert at six o’clock in the morning. My dad would put us on his shoulder, with an old hat, and we’re all going – you know so.

My dad was very excited about it. He said he was born on Carnival Day, and they lived in New Street, which is right on the corner of where all the mass happens. But I knew nothing, nothing, of his involvement in the making of Carnival.

Later, they sent me to London, to do my A-levels and stuff, and I got involved with Carnival.

I made this costume – won a prize – and I went back to Trinidad and showed my dad.

Look at this picture. I won with this costume at this carnival in London.

And he just said, oh, I used to make carnival costumes.

WHAT? Where?

But he didn’t really go into great detail about what he actually made. So, I didn’t know.

The discussion was brief.

Then, when he passed away, his brother came to see me in Mahogany in London. And I had this white elephant. And he said, oh, you know, your dad used to make elephants under the house.

You know, we never spoke about carnival. He just took us to Carnival, and we just enjoyed going with him. So, we never had any making experience, but we did get the importance of the joy and the community celebration and how inspiring it was.

So yeah! those are my earliest memories.

They are really amazing – sitting and watching the bands coming up.

You see them coming, coming, coming.

 And then they get to the bottom of the ramp – and you see all the sparkle.

And then they start coming up – and it’s like pulsating like this.

 It’s very exciting too.  

And then they burst onto the stage – and all the colours are moving.

It’s very organised – one section, the next section.

It’s all yellow and black – or it’s red and green – it’s really a feast for the eyes.

 And the music as well – as these dancers go across the stage.

Clary Salandy in Blitz, Photo: Christopher Ramdeen

JP Why do you think your dad didn’t show you the costumes he was making?

CS Because he didn’t have any knowledge that I might have been interested in any sort of making. Plus, I think getting girls involved with something like Carnival in those days would not have been seen as the right thing to do. A sort of man’s world, you know, steel band and mass camp and all men smoking and drinking and stuff wouldn’t be the place he would have thought that he would want his daughter to go. But I don’t think he thought of it as a career or anything like that. It was just what you do, you know, in your community.

You know, families were doing it. And so his family did whatever they did. It’s interesting how your DNA, finds a way through situations. If I hadn’t come to London, make that costume, win that prize, I wouldn’t have gone home with the photograph and have had that discussion to know about that carnival heritage.

JP How did you first come to Carnival in Nothing Hill.

CS That’s a really interesting story, because I came over to London to do music. But then Margaret Thatcher changed the law for overseas students, and they raised the price of the course for music to a huge amount of money – which my parents couldn’t afford.

So, I had no choice. I had to do art instead of music.

When I was doing my foundation course, I was a good all-rounder. I could do my ceramics, I could do my graphics, whatever. And all the teachers were saying, why don’t you do fine art, do graphics, do design.

I’m like – they’re not helping me.

Everybody’s saying do their subject. Then one teacher said to me, you know, Clary, I think that you wouldn’t be very unhappy doing that. He says, you love music, you’re very animated and you like working with people. Why don’t you do theatre design?

I hadn’t thought of anything like that because I wasn’t into drama or anything. So, I thought, OK, let’s give it a go, and he helped me.

I was learning about Shakespeare, reading up about Chekhov so that, if they asked me any questions, I could answer

When I applied to the theatre design course at Wimbledon School of Art. As soon as I walked in, they said, ‘well, you don’t know anything about theatre, so why are you applying?’

Can you believe that? The interviewers – the head of the course, “you don’t know anything about theatre”, Can you believe that? I’d come from Trinidad, so they assumed Trinidad had no knowledge.

Typical!

And I thought, oh, okay – I come from Trinidad and Tobago.  So, I pulled out carnival magazines that I had in my bag. “And this is the kind of costumes that we make”. And I was showing them pictures of carnival and how amazing it was, and all the amazing costumes and telling them all about it.

So, they gave me a place.

Blitz on the road, Photo: Stephen Ramdeen

And while I was there, they sent me to do work experience at the Notting Hill Carnival. The lighting tutor‘s girlfriend was working with Niki Lyons at Cocoyea.

Serendipity.

So, I went and did work experience with Cocoyea, and that’s how I got involved with Notting Hill Carnival.

I think I did two bands with Niki. And then I worked with Arthur Peters from Cocoyea as well.

Then, one-day, I was on the train station in Acton Town, and I met Carl Gabriel. He was coming down the steps and he said, ‘I know you. I’ve seen you. You’ve been in Cocoyea mas camp’. And I said, “yes”. He says, “do you want to bring a band”? So, I said, “yes”.

That was it. He was just starting Stardust with Randolph Baptiste, and they were looking for somebody to design. So, they gave me the opportunity to do their first set of costumes.

They wanted to do a band called Pollination. So that’s what we did – flowers that were made with cane and stretched fabric – that actually won first prize in the Children’s Carnival.

And that was the thing that sort of said – Clary – you have, something more to offer here. So, you should take it seriously.

JP That brings me really to my next question. What drives you to make costumes and to bring out a band?

CS One thing I didn’t say earlier was that I did research Carnival when I was doing my degree at Wimbledon. So, the history of Carnival and its evolution in Trinidad became very, very, important to me.

Now the Notting Hill Carnival in those days, was scary. There were riots and all. There was a very negative perception of what Carnival was.

So, it was really important, once I got involved with it, to recognise that it wasn’t just about the costumes, or the storytelling, or the politics.

Carnival is an art of resistance. It’s an art of defiance and just being there is taking a stance.

The point is to be there. That we have a right, and I think that Carnival is my right.

Thinking right back to the beginnings of Carnival, with the slavery, what they did and how Carnival evolved, with each character being a representation of some horrific thing that happened to the slaves, and then evolving into becoming a reflection of society through the Calypso.

And the fact that we have steel pan because they banned the drum. The aristocracy putting laws to muzzle the people, to remove your creativity, to erase your heritage.

You know, that tug of war between your absolute identity in your DNA and the thing you have to become because society is moulding you to fit into the new rules. That is a very important part of who I am and what Carnival is.

For me, Carnival came through a DNA line with my parents that I really didn’t see.

And then when I learned the history, it really, it hurt me.

That is, I know those streets, those corners that those people were standing on. And for those horrible things to happen, and for characters like the Midnight Robber and the Bookman, and those traditional characters to emerge from that. There’s a truth in them that for me is important, and I needed to take that gauntlet because they did things and they said things through their mass that enabled the rest of the world, and the rest of the community to understand.

And so today I need to learn from that technique of how to say what you need to say. You don’t have to be violent – you just need to make your point about who you are.

We are a Black community within a European setting. Particularly in Britain – a part of what was once a colony.

Mahogany on stage at the Olympic hand over ceremony, Photo: Jim Ives

We’re now maybe independent in the Caribbean, but the legacy of how we came to be and why there’s a relationship between the Caribbean, and the culture of the Caribbean, and England is still extremely important.

And I remain very humble and very appreciative of everybody who took the stand to make Nottinghill happen.

And then when I understood that Notting Hill started because of the killing of Kelso Cochrane and the racism that was going on there, you can’t ignore that. So, it’s really important to support Notting Hill – not just for fun.

The fun is a very important too, because that’s part of the freedom. It’s why the slaves died for us to be free. So we can laugh and enjoy. That’s something they couldn’t do. They couldn’t be free and laugh and enjoy. They were suffering. And we have to be the opposite of that. I get that. But the journey to the fun needs to be rich with development of who you are. It needs to be rich in building a community.

For them to be free, they had to work together to escape. They had to build a new community based on what they could remember from their DNA.

So, we still have J’ouvert, but what is J’ouvert? In an African context. It is an initiation ceremony. You may call it J’ouvert with a French name, but what they’re doing is not French. French people do not cover themselves in mud and stuff like that. African people do that. And when the slaves were covering themselves with molasses and the slave masters were looking on – the slave masters used to cover themselves with molasses to mimic the slaves – but when the slaves were covering themselves with molasses, they were not mimicking the slave masters. They were being themselves because they always covered themselves with mud.

There’s always been this thing where the slaves always made it look as if they were doing what the masters wanted them to do, but they were actually being themselves – in what they could remember.

That’s why I have enormous respect and love for the steel band. You know, because you can pass a law to take away our voice. Imagine banning the drum for a black community. Now, how wicked could you be? That’s the last thing that they had of who they were from Africa – and you tried to stop them from having it.

And your wickedness to try to stop them. The law is so detailed. It’s a skin with a thing and they’ve described it so to make sure that those black people could never use those drums.

But that also enabled them to bring the drum back as a metal because it’s not a skin – it’s a metal.

So, you can’t stop us now – we could use the metal.

And on top of that, we’re going to add something that you think belongs to you – it have melody! It’s a better drum than the one we had before.

I see that as a little bit like how I came to Carnival, and finding out from my dad after I had done it.

You know, when I see a drum and I see the pan, I say, yes, you can’t stop it. It’s the destiny of the people, and their ingenuity will rise. Every time you block them; their ingenuity should rise.

So, for me, a Carnival band is me helping my community to get the rights that the slaves gave to them. That right to be free and to be in the streets because there’s a thing about the road that’s made to walk on – Carnival Day is a big thing.

There were laws saying that no more than 10 Black people could stand on a corner – and all of this thing. So, when they say put Carnival in a park, we have to say – SORRY. it’s against everything that we knew. We have to be in the street on that day. Our feet must be in the street as free people. That’s an important symbol.

So again, I look at the importance of the Griot in African culture. The Griot holds the history of his nation, and then he passes it on to the next one.

I think that we can pay tribute to that every year by the way we select our theme – that is current, contemporary. So, we’re always trying to do something that is of the now, and reflective of what’s going on around us in the way that the Griot would have told that story and passed it on to the next generation.

So, it’s not just in the calypso, it’s in the way that we choose the theme and then the way that we bring the story to life with the costumes that reflect whatever it is we’re doing.

We’ve done lots of different kinds of themes. We did Out of Africa. We did The Time for Change is Now. That was during the lockdown. We did Diaspora. We’ve done abstract things like A Stretch of the Imagination, where we just used abstract shapes, but we were trying to demonstrate what design is, and how you can explore.

Fire and Ice in the crowds at Notting Hill Carnival, Photo: Stephen Ramdeen

JP When you talk about Carnival, you talk a lot about community. How would you describe the relationship between you, as a creative producer, and the audience and the community? What’s the nature of that relationship?

CS Well, Carnival is for everyone. I see myself in some ways having to create something that will resonate with everybody. That’s why choosing a theme that is current is important.

Diaspora was very important because it looked at the fact that we’ve got all these wars around us, but how many of those people who are fighting in those places really, really, originate there? Most of us have come from here, or come from there, and we’ve lived there for generations, but it’s not our actual origins.

One might say my origins are actually in the Caribbean, but that’s because I’m here in England. When I’m in the Caribbean, my origin is Africa. So, there is this mix-up of people and we’re fighting over land that really doesn’t belong to us. So, what we really should be doing is living in harmony together and respecting each other’s differences.

Diaspora was about that. That we need to love the whole world.

The relationship with the community is actually through the making of the costumes as well. In the designs, there’s something for everyone, something for the children, something highly political.

I had a design called Tears of Joy, and they just looked like teardrops in different colours. And I thought, oh, this is the worst design I ever did. But do you know something? Everybody wanted that one.

I thought my drawing was a crummy sketch, but all the people that came in loved the colours. And then at the end of Carnival, this woman came to me and said, you know, Tears of Joy. I had to choose Tears of Joy, because I’m recovering from cancer. So, each joy resonates with different people in different ways, and in ways I couldn’t foresee.

So, people choose, but it isn’t just about frivolous fun. They’re choosing, in that moment to recover, to celebrate. So, each costume must do something like that; to be a bridge, to be inclusive. Regardless of who you are, from whichever culture you’re in, there will be something in the band that you think belongs to you.

I also tend to have something that says something for the ancestors, or an African voice or something as a root, but invariably there’s something for everyone.

Then, when we go on the street, there’s the community that come to Carnival who choose which costumes they want, and they’re in the band. But there’s also another community. There are all those people out there who are going to see it. And then you have to have another thing. You have to engage with them in a way that is awe-inspiring.

Wow!, look at that.

The Carnival Messiah finale costume The Holy Spirit, Photo: Diane Howse

Slavery didn’t happen for nothing, for us to seem that we were mediocre.

So, when we go outside in our costumes, people should recognize the genius of the inheritance that we have got in our DNA.

Just like the genius of the rise of the pan from the drum.

When Mahogany goes out there, I want people to think; who is making this?

You know who making it? The little 14-year-old girl in Harlesden, and the other little old man up there in Harlesden are making it. So, it’s not about “artists”. We are all artists. We all have a voice. We all have a creativity.

And my role is to help to facilitate that.

Speedy is the most amazing engineer. Any difficulty I throw at him, he will come up with a beautiful imaginative solution because he loves movement and life and all our costumes have inherent movement.

We love to play with materials that do that. That’s going to be very inspirational for an architect, for an engineer, for other designers. The work must operate on every level, intelligence in the concept. Intelligence and ingenuity in the practical making of it

And then on the day – people jumping.

I do not choreograph my people. At the most, I choose music very carefully so that it will engage – it will fire them up. You know, good rhythm. So even if you don’t know the music, you’re going to love the rhythm, you’re going to dance.

And once the music starts!

One of my ladies said to me, you know, Clary, “when that music starts on Carnival Day, I have an out of body experience.” – I was like! ‘an out of body experience?’

And when I look at the pictures of her, she is having an out of body experience. She’s – yeah, her face and her hands are everywhere, and joy is in her face, and she’s jumping.

You know, just imagine when I see that joy, can you imagine what it could be if you were a slave and your descendants are now able to have that level of joy?

It’s taken a long time for the black community: Martin Luther King is dead, George Floyd is still going on, Stephen Lawrence, you know, all of that is still there.

My role is to continue to let people know that it hasn’t stopped.

Carnival has a really important role for us to demonstrate who we are, but in a very positive way.

So, when you look at it, you say, ‘you know, Black people are so creative’.

And it’s a community. It’s not just about black people, but it’s the way that we combine that collaborative effort.

There’s a magic in Carnival that happens when you’re making, especially at three o’clock in the morning when you only have two days to go and you have so much to make and everybody’s now coming in.

‘We’ve got to do it’.

‘How do we do it?’

‘What needs to happen?’

Flowers and swans in the Seychelles, Photo: Kiki Norton

And suddenly there is this magic as everybody’s idea and energy is coming together to do something that they didn’t do three weeks before, which they could have done, but they didn’t.

They’re doing it now. And now they’ll do anything to make it look the best it can and to make sure it’s ready. That’s when you see more of their creativity than if it was a slow process. Because when it’s a slow process, they’re relying on somebody to tell them what to do. When the process is stressed, they’re relying on – ‘What can I do to make it happen?’ And they’re looking for an answer. And that finding the answer to make it happen quickly and good is part of the development and the growing.

There are so many levels on which Carnival is operating: for the community, with the community, by the community.

Then when they’re on the road, and doing this amazing ballet of costume, and dance, and fun and everything. That’s a completely amazing moment of success and achievement for everybody.

JP

Can you imagine a world without Carnival?

CS No. Not in my world, because my whole life is Carnival.

Out of the blue, Photo: Stephen Ramdeen