This weekend the streets of west London belong to the steel pan and the sound system. The Notting Hill Carnival — Europe’s biggest street party, born in 1966 out of the Windrush generation’s longing for home — brings with it the whole glorious argument of Caribbean music: ska’s bright brass, rocksteady’s slow sway, the deep space of dub, calypso’s raised eyebrow, and soca’s outright demand that you move. It seemed like the right Friday to pull together a crate that follows that argument from a Kingston studio in 1964 to a Jamaican bedroom in 2018.
None of this music was ever meant to be listened to politely. It was made for the road, for the dancehall, for the all-night sound system — which is exactly why it belongs on your shelf when the internet falls quiet. Here are the records I keep returning to: the session men of Studio One who turned a film theme into the sound of a city; the mad-scientist mixers of 1970s Kingston who found whole new music in the space between the beats; the calypsonians who told the truth with a smile; and the young voices carrying it all forward. It is the last big party of the summer. Turn it up.
The Skatalites — Guns of Navarone
The definitive ska instrumental — Kingston’s finest session band of the early sixties taking a Hollywood war theme and turning it into the sound of a street party. Recorded 1964, released 1965, still the tune that starts a carnival the right way.
Don Drummond — Eastern Standard Time
Drummond was the trombone genius of Studio One, a player of heartbreaking melodic clarity whose best instrumentals sound like weather. This 1964 cut glides between bright and melancholy in a way nobody has ever quite matched.
Prince Buster — Al Capone
The original rude boy of blue beat — a reworking of the “Al Capone” theme that became the swagger of Jamaican popular music, all strut and menace and mischief. Madness built half their early sound on this man’s records.
Desmond Dekker & The Aces — 007 (Shanty Town)
The rocksteady rude-boy anthem: “dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail”. The first Jamaican record to really break through in Britain, and the moment the island’s music stopped being a novelty and became a movement.
Toots & The Maytals — Pressure Drop
Recorded 1969 — the hinge between ska and reggae, with Toots Hibbert’s gospel-tested voice roaring over a rhythm that refuses to stay still. “It’s the pressure drop that’s gonna make you feel alright.” Sixty years old and still the truth.
Augustus Pablo — King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
The dub masterpiece: Pablo’s spacey melodica over a rockers rhythm, then King Tubby’s mixing desk opens the floor and lets the whole track float into the echo. The most electronic record of 1976, made with tape and faders and pure imagination.
Max Romeo — Chase the Devil
Produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry with his Upsetters house band, this is roots reggae at maximum fire: “I’m gonna put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth.” The bassline alone could power a small country.
Lord Kitchener — London Is the Place for Me
The Windrush anthem, sung by a young Trinidadian calypsonian on the quayside at Tilbury in 1948 — recorded properly in 1951. If the carnival has a founding document, this is it: the sound of arrival, of making a new home, of hope.
Denise Belfon — Dance & Dingolay
Trinidad’s soca queen at full voltage — a modern carnival anthem built on the old command to “dingolay”, to jump and wine and let the music have you. This is what the parade actually sounds like, all the way down Ladbroke Grove.
Steel Pulse — Handsworth Revolution
The title track of Birmingham’s great reggae debut, 1978 — British reggae declaring itself, with the district of Handsworth as its spiritual address. Political, beautiful, and still utterly danceable.
Calypso Rose — No Madame
The Calypso Queen of the world, born in Tobago in 1940, returned in her seventies with a Manu Chao-produced masterpiece and a feminist calypso that slaps back at every man who told her to hush. “No madame” is the greatest two words in calypso since “Jean and Dinah”.
Koffee — Toast
The young Jamaican voice of the 2020s — dancehall joy with a smile in it, from the Grammy-winning Rapture EP. “We a toast to the good life.” Sixty-five years after ska began, this is the sound of the music still arriving, still brand new.
The whole set is waiting on the playlist — twelve tracks, sixty-five years of carnival, from Kingston to the streets of west London. Press play and dance like the parade is coming down your street.
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