Nostalgia Steel Band

One of Notting Hill Carnival's regular mas bands, with up to 120 people participating.

Nostalgia Steel Band was founded in 1964, and has contributed to exposing the melting pot of London and the Caribbean Art forms to the wider group. The Carnival Club became an integral of Nostalgia in 1969.

Nostalgia is a traditional pan-around-neck steel band. This means the musicians carry their instruments around their necks in the traditional way of the pioneers of the steel band movement some 60 years ago. The Notting Hill Carnival with its colourful costumes, rhythmic music and deliquesce of visual and audio art, emanated from the early Notting Hill Procession of 1965. Nostalgia has been in every carnival and its associated events (panorama, street parties and competitions) since then.

Nostalgia is probably the only traditional Steel Band, 'around-the-neck' band, still in existence in England today. The band that played at the first Notting Hill carnival (1965), was The Russell Henderson Steel Band, later to be renamed, Nostalgia Steel band.

In the year 2001, Nostalgia celebrated 50 years of the Steel Band in Britain. Sterling Betrancourt was a member of the first steel band to perform in Britain, TASPO, The Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra, (1951). Performing at the Festival of Britain, 1951, it was the first time the sound of the steel pan was heard on the British Isles.

Click here to read Nostagia celebrates 40 years