Live at Notting Hill Carnival 2026

To stand before Channel One’s handcrafted speaker stacks is to understand Carnival’s deeper socioeconomic lineage. Emerging in 1966 out of the community organising of figures like Claudia Jones and Rhaune Laslett following the racial violence of the late 1950s, Carnival was conceived as a vital response to marginalisation. Sixty years later, across an increasingly gentrified and privatised London where working-class and Black cultural gathering points face unrelenting pressure, Carnival retains its original purpose. It is a shared declaration that the street belongs to the people. Situated just streets away from Grenfell Tower, Channel One’s presence anchors this spirit in memory and continuity, transforming heavy sound into a form of collective healing.

When Eek-A-Mouse stepped up to the microphone, the dance shifted into a vibrant cultural collision. Emerging from Kingston in the late 1970s alongside producer Linval Thompson and the Roots Radics, Eek-A-Mouse pioneered the singjay style—an idiosyncratic fusion of spoken deejay toasting, soulful melodies, and playful, percussive scatting. Towering over the crowd, his playful cadence cut cleanly through Channel One’s meditative selections. His vocal improvisations injected a spontaneous, raw energy into the day and included renditions of ‘Do You Remember', 'Star, Daily News & Gleaner', 'Wild Like A Tiger', 'Ganja Smuggling' and 'Wa-Do-Dem' on top of 'Dub Is Shinig'.

This was Eek-A-Mouse’s very first time at Notting Hill Carnival and it was a very special debut, a performance for the ages. The joined forces of such pioneering and influential voices created an unmediated space where heritage is actively lived and passed onto new generations who were lucky enough to experience such a moment.