After two years hiatus occasioned by the covid19 pandemic, the popular Notting Hill carnival returns to West London on its traditional dates – the last weekend in August.
And with it comes the ever bubbly Nigerian Corner, which will host series of Nigerian artistes in a concert on the main carnival day – Monday August 29, 2022.
The streets of west London come alive every bank holiday weekend in August with a huge Afro-Caribbean party at Europe’s biggest street festival: Notting Hill Carnival.
Nigerians in England have bought into the carnival fully since the mid-1980s with Ayo Shonaiya’s R70 firm together with DJ Abass’ DJA Media being the arrowheads of the Nigerian Corner, the section off the main carnival ground where Nigerian artistes perform and Nigerian foods served and memorabilia sold in the past two decades.
However, the Nigerian Corner will wear a new look this year as it will now be identified as The Afrobeats Corner.
According to Shonaiya, who is the lead organiser/producer of the corner, the name change has become necessary given the phenomenal fame that the afrobeats genre has garnered globally.
Shonaiya is the producer of the wave-making Netflix documentary, Afrobeats:TheBackStory.
“After almost 30 years of promoting Nigerian music at the nottinghill carnival, we feel that the time is right to identify what the Nigerian Corner at the carnival does with Afrobeats because that’s the main genre of music that we promote there. We are convinced it’s a fitting tribute to afrobeats phenomenon and we are glad that the main sponsors of our Afrobeats documentary, Boomplay, are also on board with us at the nottinghill carnival as the lead sponsor.”
Shonaiya added that this year’s show would be jointly hosted by DJ Abass and Hypeman Shopsydoo and will be broadcast live on HipTv.
It is not the first time that the Nigerian Corner, which is usually organised on Adela Street in London, would wear a temporary name change.
In 2016 and 2017, the corner transformed to The Lagos Corner courtesy of the two-year sponsorship of the initiative by the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism Arts & Culture, which used the occasion to extend the Lagos@50 celebrations to Nigerians in the diaspora.
Those two editions were also broadcast live to Nigerians at home through the Lagos Television.
