Carlos Lezama, 83, Dies; Shaped West Indian Parade
Carlos Lezama, who as president of the West Indian American Day Carnival Association transformed a Brooklyn block party into the city’s largest parade, with millions of spectators lining two miles of Eastern Parkway each Labor Day to enjoy throbbing steel-pan bands, ostrich-plumed dancers and fantastical floats, died on Monday. He was 83.
His death, at a Brooklyn hospital, was caused by complications of diabetes, said Jean Alexander, a spokeswoman for the carnival association, which Mr. Lezama led from 1967 until 2002.
When Mr. Lezama was elected president of the association, just a few hundred people joined the celebration on a block near his home on Dean Street in Crown Heights. Two years later, after Mr. Lezama obtained a city permit for a parade along Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza, tens of thousands of people watched or marched.
In 2001, Mr. Lezama’s last year as its chief organizer, the parade drew, by police estimates, two million spectators, as well as 10,000 marchers, 42 bands and 30 floats, including whimsical depictions of ocean life, outer space and flowers of the world. Enticed by the dueling rhythms of reggae, calypso and steel-drum music, marchers — if you could call them that — pranced in grass skirts, leopard-skin warrior costumes and the multihued wings of butterflies.
A turning point for the parade came in 1995, when it was broadcast live on television for the first time. Although the parade had long drawn West Indians from around the city, Mr. Lezama hoped the coverage would attract New Yorkers from other ethnic backgrounds. “I think our day has come, perhaps,” he said then, remembering when 500 was a good turnout.
Although Mr. Lezama helped found the association in 1965, the city’s West Indian carnival had its roots in Harlem in the 1920s, when lavish events were held at the Savoy, Renaissance and Audubon Ballrooms. The carnival left Harlem in 1965, as an increasing number of immigrants from countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada settled in New York, especially in central Brooklyn.
Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Lezama was not of West Indian ancestry. Born on Sept. 3, 1923, he was a son of Venezuelan parents who moved to Trinidad when he was a small boy. As a teenager, he returned to Venezuela to find odd jobs. Eventually, he got a job on a passenger ship. By then, he had learned to play the melodiously tinny steel-pan drum — first fashioned by hammering dents into the lids of oil drums left by ships that had refueled in Trinidad. With several shipmates, he began entertaining passengers.
Mr. Lezama came to the United States in the early 1950s and found work in a dental laboratory. He had already married Hilary Charles, his childhood sweetheart, in Trinidad; she died in 2000.
Hired by the New York City Transit Authority in the 1960s, Mr. Lezama eventually became a subway machinist. He retired in 1988.
He is survived by a son, Kenwyn, of Flatbush; a daughter, Yolanda Lezama-Clark, of Westbury, N.Y.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His daughter is now president of the carnival association.
It was a friend, Rufus Goring, a Trinidadian who was then president of carnival association, who asked Mr. Lezama to join the group in 1965. In those days, lavish costumes and the metallic tones of steel drums were already part of the annual block party.
But by the late 1980s, Eastern Parkway was jammed each Labor Day by 100-member steel-drum bands, dozens of other music groups on flatbed trucks blasting calypso or reggae through refrigerator-size speakers, fleets of human sailboats and throngs of dancers in sequined silver and gold foil costumes, some balancing headdresses 10 feet tall. Along the sidewalks, hundreds of vendors hawked everything from commemorative T-shirts to rum to roti, the breadlike Caribbean pastry stuffed with pungently barbecued goat or chicken.
“Carnival is sort of a therapy, a way of forgetting troubles,” Mr. Lezama told a reporter in 1991. “This is exactly how it used to be in the West Indies.”
At his funeral in Brooklyn yesterday, Mr. Lezama’s daughter said, live musicians played the hymn “How Great Thou Art” on steel-pan drums.
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Carlos Lezama
When Mr. Lezama was elected president of the association, just a few hundred people joined the celebration on a block near his home on Dean Street in Crown Heights. Two years later, after Mr. Lezama obtained a city permit for a parade along Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza, tens of thousands of people watched or marched.
In 2001, Mr. Lezama’s last year as its chief organizer, the parade drew, by police estimates, two million spectators, as well as 10,000 marchers, 42 bands and 30 floats, including whimsical depictions of ocean life, outer space and flowers of the world. Enticed by the dueling rhythms of reggae, calypso and steel-drum music, marchers — if you could call them that — pranced in grass skirts, leopard-skin warrior costumes and the multihued wings of butterflies.
A turning point for the parade came in 1995, when it was broadcast live on television for the first time. Although the parade had long drawn West Indians from around the city, Mr. Lezama hoped the coverage would attract New Yorkers from other ethnic backgrounds. “I think our day has come, perhaps,” he said then, remembering when 500 was a good turnout.
Although Mr. Lezama helped found the association in 1965, the city’s West Indian carnival had its roots in Harlem in the 1920s, when lavish events were held at the Savoy, Renaissance and Audubon Ballrooms. The carnival left Harlem in 1965, as an increasing number of immigrants from countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada settled in New York, especially in central Brooklyn.
Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Lezama was not of West Indian ancestry. Born on Sept. 3, 1923, he was a son of Venezuelan parents who moved to Trinidad when he was a small boy. As a teenager, he returned to Venezuela to find odd jobs. Eventually, he got a job on a passenger ship. By then, he had learned to play the melodiously tinny steel-pan drum — first fashioned by hammering dents into the lids of oil drums left by ships that had refueled in Trinidad. With several shipmates, he began entertaining passengers.
Mr. Lezama came to the United States in the early 1950s and found work in a dental laboratory. He had already married Hilary Charles, his childhood sweetheart, in Trinidad; she died in 2000.
Hired by the New York City Transit Authority in the 1960s, Mr. Lezama eventually became a subway machinist. He retired in 1988.
He is survived by a son, Kenwyn, of Flatbush; a daughter, Yolanda Lezama-Clark, of Westbury, N.Y.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His daughter is now president of the carnival association.
It was a friend, Rufus Goring, a Trinidadian who was then president of carnival association, who asked Mr. Lezama to join the group in 1965. In those days, lavish costumes and the metallic tones of steel drums were already part of the annual block party.
But by the late 1980s, Eastern Parkway was jammed each Labor Day by 100-member steel-drum bands, dozens of other music groups on flatbed trucks blasting calypso or reggae through refrigerator-size speakers, fleets of human sailboats and throngs of dancers in sequined silver and gold foil costumes, some balancing headdresses 10 feet tall. Along the sidewalks, hundreds of vendors hawked everything from commemorative T-shirts to rum to roti, the breadlike Caribbean pastry stuffed with pungently barbecued goat or chicken.
“Carnival is sort of a therapy, a way of forgetting troubles,” Mr. Lezama told a reporter in 1991. “This is exactly how it used to be in the West Indies.”
At his funeral in Brooklyn yesterday, Mr. Lezama’s daughter said, live musicians played the hymn “How Great Thou Art” on steel-pan drums.
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