This year, Lewis and I turned on our television and watched the New Year Parade that London hosts annually. We were fortunate to find the only TV channel that shared the parade in the USA. It was a public-broadcasting channel. (Otherwise, you can watch it online). We felt ebullient to see its levels of diversity and variety. It was a stark contrast to holiday festivities in New York. Typical of the American Hollywood system, NYC constricts its performances. Tree-lighting ceremonies, holiday parades, and New Year's celebrations mostly feature only a few categories: women who wear size 2 or 4 clothes, top-billing Hollywood or TV Network stars, actors from whatever sitcom the NYC-based national TV Networks are promoting, and overpaid "music artists" who can't sing but can only lip sync. Terribly (and predictably), most events are white-washed, despite NYC being a diverse metropolis. Year after year, you never see an authentic Hispanic ensemble. You never see an Asian group. Even NYC's Lunar New Year festivities in Chinatown are excluded by the media and merely get a 30-second glimpse on the news. You never see amateur talent. They do not get the spotlight. Thus, most of the shows lack "heart".
Consequently, we were thrilled with the line-up in London. This year was expected to involve 10,000 participants! Understandably, the parade did not occur due to pandemic precaution procedures. Some of the participants urged the British network to host a series of studio-made performances. Unable to travel, American marching bands submitted videotaped performances, too. Here is a sampling of the diversity (I added pictures from the previous year):
- Carnaval del Pueblo dance troupe, with flag-bearers of various nations--including a LGBT Pride flag.
- A London-based Korean vocal group of young K-Pop women named KAACHI. The word means Value and Together.
- Members of Extreme Bike Battle doing stunts.
- A gymnastic Chinese lion dance with percussionists.
- The Kimbanguist Brass Band: an African group in London.
- Tap-dancers from the USA.
- Jaime Cullum: a modest yet vivacious English jazz crooner who was admittedly not a Hollywood persona (that fits nicely with this blog post). Interestingly, his Jewish father escaped Nazi-Germany, and his Burmese mother relocated to Wales. His yuletide song was performed with singers and a lively band.
- Sophie Ellis-Bextor: a double-platinum selling Londoner with a modest opinion of her physicality and a pro-EU attitude.
- Steel drum percussionists from Urban Fox Orchestra Steelband, consisting of a diverse group of players of all ages.
- Panash Steel Orchestra UK featured steelpan players of utmost skill who were not only Indian but included many nationalities.
- Kinetika Bloco had spicy brass and woodwind musicians that gave upbeat Caribbean music for their dancers to move to.
- Drummers from the London School of Dhol who learned rhythms from Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
- Dancers from the London School of Samba.
- Dancers from the Salsa Soark in London.
- Molly Hocking: an English winner of televised talent shows.
- Harleymoon Kemp: the UK's newest country music singer.
- Boogie Storm: a sensational dancing group that blended a medley of pop music.
Lastly, because the BBC is commercial-free, we savored the 1.5 hour celebration without an extra hour of interruptive advertisements (which American networks usually insert--while eliminating footage of the actual celebrations).
*Click on this link to learn more about the affordable BBC...
https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2019/05/affordable-bbc-or-expensive-american-tv.html
*To read about our visit to England, please click this link:
https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2021/10/our-trip-to-london-uk-part-1-which.html
For us, watching London's parade was a wholesome and encouraging way to kick-off the year. We needed it... since this short video (below) shows what happened in NYC on New Year's Eve! It is typical, disturbing, and emblematic of NYC's incorrigible governance.
Such fearless vandalism did not occur in a ghetto; the attack occurred on NYC's richest street: Fifth Avenue. It happened in daylight in a pricey part of Flatiron neighborhood. Such terrible things do not occur in other first-world cities. The police of those cities wouldn't let it happen. Yet in this place, each year commences with problems unchanged from the prior years.
To see reasons to avoid NYC for Christmas, please click this link:
https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-spend-christmas.html
To see New Year festivities around the world, please click this link:
https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2020/01/new-years-around-world.html
As we look to the United Kingdom for our next stage in life, Lewis and I were grateful to see positive things.
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