Boston parades celebrate colorful J’ouvert, Caribbean festival

“Everyone just wants to dance, have fun and then go to work on Monday like nothing happened,” Hinds said.

On Saturday, the annual J’ouvert and Caribbean parades took place, celebrations of the mix of island cultures that thrive in neighborhoods near Blue Hill Avenue and Franklin Park.

J’ouvert, which means “dawn,” is a morning parade that begins at 6 a.m. after a night of partying. This year, officials moved the J’ouvert parade route to Franklin Park after an early morning shooting that left eight people injured marred the celebration a year ago.

There were no major shooting incidents this year in which multiple people were injured by gunfire. Boston police said they had made 14 arrests around the parades and recovered five firearms as of 5:15 p.m.

Shortly before 10 p.m., officers responded to a street near Franklin Park because someone had been shot. The victim, who was not identified, was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, according to Officer Michael Torigian, a Boston police spokesman.

Police did not comment on whether the shooting was related to the celebration, but said it occurred after the events had ended.

Near the end of the parade, several street vendors set up shop. Some sold jewelry, others Jamaican or West Indian food, such as jerk chicken, Trinidad and Tobago sandwiches and roti. Karen Johnson, who lives in Springfield but grew up nearby, said she had had luck selling waist beads for women.

“It’s about empowering women, making people feel good,” said Johnson, 39.

After the morning parade concluded under a warm summer sun, a lull settled in. Sure, speakers stacked among vendors blared music, but the crowds thinned as people strolled through the area or congregated outside a couple of local pizzerias.

Some attendees were upset by the J’ouvert parade’s rerouting, which moved the event away from some residential areas and into a park patrolled by state police. They worried the event would be stigmatized by last year’s shooting.

Others had protested the route change before the event, including Brian Worrell, a city councilman who called for stricter security measures but for the route to remain unchanged through neighborhoods. But officials announced this week that they would move the parade to Franklin Park.

Police Commissioner Michael Cox said Friday that the change would prevent “areas where there is a large urban environment,” such as the neighborhoods around Talbot Avenue, which, Cox noted, is near historically problematic public housing projects.

Last year, at around 7:45 a.m., shots were fired in Talbot, near the parade. Police said at the time that gunfire was exchanged on a busy street. Eight people were hit by bullets.

According to police, none of the man’s injuries were life-threatening. Four people have been charged in connection with the shooting, which allegedly involved the use of a pistol equipped with a switch called a “Glock” that made it fully automatic.

That same month, fights broke out at the San Antonio parade in the North End, forcing the event to be cancelled.

This year’s J’ouvert celebration came a weekend after five people were shot near the annual Dominican festival, according to police, which was also held in Franklin Park near Circuit Drive.

“We will be there to hold people accountable, but the expectation is that nothing will happen,” Cox said during a news conference Friday. before the weekend festivities.

On Saturday, the mood in the area remained cheerful as the afternoon event, the Caribbean parade, approached. Bursts of music could be heard from porches and passing vehicles. Jamaican dancehall music overlapped with reggaeton.

A 16 year old boy One girl smiled from ear to ear as she made her way to the parade, a circle of rainbow feathers sprouting like prismatic wings from the back of her purple dress. She was excited to dance in the parade, she said, although she wasn’t looking forward to walking the mile-long route in that outfit, but the teen of Haitian descent said she’s just as excited to see people from other Caribbean cultures dance.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, dancer Jhaleela Johnson, 31, wore a purple bejeweled outfit and headdress. As she prepared for her performance with the Socaholics (Trinidad’s soca music genre), she ate a drumstick from a takeout box.

Jhaleela Johnson, who said she represents Haiti, Honduras and Trinidad, has been dancing at Carnival since she was young. The dance isn’t too complicated, she said, you just have to let the music take over.

“You just do what you feel,” he said. “Soca and reggae will tell you what to do.”

As night fell, vendors took down their tents and loaded their equipment into trucks and moving vans. The grounds were littered with empty glasses, plastic bottles and bags that vendors collected from their stalls.

Around 9 p.m., Shirley Shillingford, president of the Caribbean-American Carnival Association, said she would stay until the last vendor finished packing up.

She said this year’s festival was a wonderful success and praised Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Police Department for their collaboration with the organizers.

“(Wu) believed in us last year. Even though there was a shooting in J’ouvert, he felt we shouldn’t suffer with this negativity after all the hard work we put in,” Shillingford said.

Shillingford believed the change in the parade route not only made the event safer, but was a boon to food vendors, as parade-goers flooded the area hungry for breakfast after the march.

Lucresia Adams of Mattapan said it was the first J’ouvert she had attended in nearly 20 years, after violent incidents at the celebrations kept her away. Adams, who said she is running for a state representative seat in Suffolk’s 6th District, praised police for keeping this year’s event safe.

“They put an action plan in place and it worked. I was very impressed and felt very confident for a change,” she said.

Helena Getahun-Hawkins can be reached at [email protected]. Sean Cotter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @cotterreporterNick Stoico can be reached at [email protected].