Brooklyn’s first Jamaica Day parade a huge success

New York made history on Saturday, August 8, as the inaugural Jamaica Rising Day Parade brought thousands of revellers into the streets of Brooklyn to mark Jamaica’s 64th Independence. It was the first standalone US parade dedicated exclusively to Jamaican heritage, culture, music and food, breaking away from the multi-nation model of the West Indian American Day Carnival typically held annually on Labour Day weekend in September.

The parade stepped off from Church and Ocean Avenues and moved toward Lincoln Road near Empire Boulevard, filling the route with reggae and dancehall music, the colours of the Jamaican flag, and three signature floats representing the island’s counties of Cornwall, Middlesex, and Surrey. The event, however, was shut down earlier than planned, reportedly as a precautionary safety measure, with attendees suggesting the crowd had simply outgrown expectations.

NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams was among the officials on hand, telling CBS News New York that the moment was worth savouring.

“We’re excited to be out here, the first-ever Jamaican Day Parade,” Williams said. “You see all the Jamaican flags out there. You see different cultures coming out to celebrate one culture.”

Reggae singer Nadine Sutherland served as grand marshal of the inaugural parade, an honour she said felt patriotic, even as she raced from the ribbon-cutting straight to the airport for a next-day performance in Birmingham, England.

“This is one of the proudest days of my life,” Sutherland posted on her Facebook page.

“To all the people who came out, and showed up, man you represented us with dignity. Next year, and the years to come will be even more awesome.”

Speaking to The Gleaner afterwards, Sutherland said the day carried personal weight.

“It was emotional, I was overwhelmed,” she exclaimed. “A Jamaica Day ... come on, man.”

“I was thinking about my auntie who died,” she said. “She didn’t live to see a Jamaica Day parade, and what she gave — what a lot of people who come as immigrants sacrificed ... . We stand on their shoulders, because you look at it and you see what some of the Jamaican descendants have done. They have done beautifully.”

Sutherland said the scale of the turnout took her by surprise.

“I don’t think a lot of people [expected] something this big ... so successful.”

Few people in the Jamaican diaspora have a clearer view of the significance of this moment than Roy ‘DJ Roy’ Walters of Road International, who was one of the hosts on the truck on the parade route. He rode on the very first Jamaica trucks ever to appear at the West Indian Day Parade on Eastern Parkway many years ago.

What struck him most, he said, wasn’t just the size of the crowd but the patrons in the crowd.

“It’s second- and third-generation Jamaicans that was really on the parkway,” Roy said. “You saw kids with Jamaican pride, many of them who were really born here in America.”

He described a call-and-response moment on the truck that captured the spirit of the day.

“If your parents were born in Jamaica — your mother born in Montego Bay, your father born in Kingston, and you were born in Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn — you are Jamaican. And the place went crazy,” he explained.

Roy didn’t downplay how close the parade came to not happening at all. He said that he was told on Thursday that the parade was practically cancelled. However, the organisers adjusted to whatever they were asked to do and they still got it done.”

Despite the shortened route and an early shutdown, DJ Roy said he left grateful that the parade actually happened.

By every account, the day was a huge success.

“Everyone was on their best behaviour — no pushing, no shoving, no quarrelling. Just great Jamaican positive vibration,” DJ Roy said.

With Jamaica’s 65th year of independence approaching in 2027, organisers, artistes, and officials all pointed to one theme, this was only the beginning. As Roy summed it up, echoing the mantra he says carried the parade to its finish: “We have to show them that we can.”

entertainment@gleanerjm.com