Holy Cowley: the return of the Cowley Road Carnival

It’s carnival day. The procession is in full flow: there are marching bands of schoolchildren, West Papuans in tribal dress, Nepalese carrying madal drums, bright seas of West African kente cloth and samba dancers spinning in feather headdresses and dazzling tasselled skirts. Later, as locals groove to the off-beats of reggae sounds and swig from cans of Red Stripe, ganja and shisha smoke become confused in a haze made golden by the late afternoon sun.

While these could be images of Rio or Kingston, we’re instead on Cowley Road, in Oxford, England. Since its conception in 1986 by members of the city’s Caribbean community, Cowley Road Carnival has fulfilled an important local function, as a celebration of a cultural diversity historically overshadowed by Oxford’s elitist uniformity. For local historian James Attlee, it’s a window into ‘the other Oxford, the one never written about,’ whose residents, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants, engender a sense of place and activity far removed (in manner, if not in distance) from the city’s oppressive, unshakeable university centre. Carnival hasn’t taken place since before the COVID-19 pandemic, but all the signs are that ‘this uniquely colourful and vibrant community event will be back on the streets’ in July 2024.

If, as for Attlee, Cowley Road’s inhabitants ‘have brought with them […] their beliefs, their values, their trades, their prejudices, the stories of their past and their hopes for the future,’ they have also inarguably brought their musical talents and tastes. Besides carnival, one of Oxford’s most well-established live events is Bossaphonik, a monthly ‘jazz world’ club night held in the Cowley Workers Social Club, which, since its creation in 2004, by DJs Dan Ofer and Gil Karpas has hosted international crossover acts ranging from Serbian-Roma jazz duo Faith i Branko to Cubafrobeat, the collaboration between world fusion collective Lokkhi Terra and former Fela Kuti bandmember Dele Sosimi.

One artist who is a direct product of Oxford’s cultural and musical melting pot is Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani, who runs the Young Women’s Music Project (YWMP), a community group whose music workshops provide a safe space for young women, trans and non-binary people. In December, Tehrani toured the UK with a band made up of YWMP members who had attended a short series of drumming classes, debuting material from her recent For You EP, on which she builds simple, repetitive songs through vocal loops and percussion such as the steelpan, Irish bodhrán and Persian daf.

This sonic palette mirrors Tehrani’s ethnic background, as the child of an Irish mother and Iranian father. Tehrani grew up going to music workshops where she, like many of the young people who now attend sessions with YWMP, found a sense of belonging that was often denied to her elsewhere in Oxford, as a second-generation immigrant from a working-class family. This experience has greatly informed her inclusive approach to community work: go to one of YWMP’s showcases (such as the all-day bill of novice DJs put on at a local cinema in June) and you’ll see artists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and gender identities, which are less likely to be represented elsewhere. Again, Oxford’s juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, cultural multiplicity and conservatism are exposed; again, these contrasts are transcended through music.

Integral to Oxford’s grassroots music scene are the Cowley Road area’s many independent music/arts hotspots (the Library and Star pubs, the Ultimate Picture Palace cinema, and the Truck record store), which form an alliance that champions local underground artists. The promoter Divine Schism puts on DIY gigs all over town, giving smaller acts the chance to appear on bills alongside more established names and to perform at regular all-day community fundraising events at spaces such as the Common Ground cafe and the Florence Park Community Centre. The solidarity that runs through Oxford’s music community is lauded by Divine Schism founder Aiden Canaday: “You need venues to be on board and open to ideas so the people who work at venues around the city are really important. It’s good to be brave and just ask if you’ve got an idea about something you’d like to do!”

Both as stalwarts of the local music community and artists in their own right, Canaday (who makes folk music in the tradition of his Welsh heritage) and Tehrani are just two of the many individuals to have experienced the benefits of a scene which recognises that it is greater than the sum of its parts. This colourful, supportive spirit will sustain Oxford’s subculture for years to come.

Cowley Road Carnival returns on July 7

This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today