He has been a regular at the Notting Hill Carnival for over 40 years. In 2009 he made the documentary “Carnival!” About the history and politics of the festival.
When asked about a “typical” Carnival anthem, Mr. Letts initially dismissed the task as impossible. However, after pondering, he referred us to an old friend, producer Mad Professor, and his 2005 track “Elaine the Osaka Dancer” – “A strange title, I know,” said Mr. Letts – written for a performer. Panafricanist, on the Mad Professor’s label. Mad Professor, whose name is Neil Fraser, is himself a household name in British music history. He pioneered the creation of the British dub sound, working with artists such as Sade and Massive Attack.
Mr. Letts chose Elaine because he put it this way: “At Carnival, you can stand on a street corner and hear a swimmer with steel pans go by, along with the sound of a Jamaican sound system just around the corner. This song perfectly captures that sound: the collision of calypso and soca with the bass-heavy rhythms of reggae. “
Mad Professor agreed to license the song and we asked him to break it down into individual instruments Tracks or “stems”, each of which is then manipulated by the user of the Instagram effect.
This process turned out to be a little more analog – and more careful – than expected. Once when asked for a progress report, Mad Professor announced that he was “baking the tapes” – which may sound like a bit of music producer slang (or it did to me anyway). In fact, it is a literal description of the process by which analog master tapes are restored by exposing them to high temperature for hours, which reduces humidity levels which can affect the quality of the tapes.
Once the tapes were baked and the stems sourced, our graphics and R&D team built the Instagram effect. This effect allows the user to play with drums, bass, horns and steel pan tracks while seeing comments from Letts on why each element is crucial to a Carnival song.
It’s not the same as dancing to steel pans in the summer heat on a simmering street in Notting Hill, London. But in a year when Carnival has been canceled almost everywhere, we hope you get as close to that feeling as possible.
