Thousands parade through Brooklyn in one of world’s largest Caribbean culture celebrations

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Metropolis’s West Indian American Day Parade kicked off Monday with hundreds of revelers dancing and marching by Brooklyn in one of many world’s largest celebrations of Caribbean tradition.

The annual Labor Day occasion, now in its 57th 12 months, turns the borough’s Jap Parkway right into a kaleidoscope of feather-covered costumes and colourful flags as members make their manner down the thoroughfare alongside floats stacked excessive with audio system enjoying soca and reggae music.

The parade routinely attracts enormous crowds, who line the virtually 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) route that runs from Crown Heights to the Brooklyn Museum. It’s additionally a well-liked vacation spot for native politicians, a lot of whom have West Indian heritage or characterize members of town’s giant Caribbean group.

The occasion has its roots in additional historically timed, pre-Lent Carnival celebrations began by a Trinidadian immigrant in Manhattan round a century in the past, in response to the organizers. The festivities had been moved to the hotter time of 12 months within the Nineteen Forties.

Brooklyn, the place tons of of hundreds of Caribbean immigrants and their descendants have settled, started internet hosting the parade within the Sixties.

The Labor Day parade is now the end result of days of carnival occasions within the metropolis, which features a metal pan band competitors and J’Ouvert, a separate avenue occasion commemorating freedom from slavery.