Top: A performer from the Braata Folk Singers. Bottom: Gammy Moses kicks off the eighth annual Caribbean Heritage Festival, the first on the Green in years. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Drums sang out over the Upper New Haven Green, slow and steady until they suddenly stopped, and only their echo hung in the air. Gammy Moses leaned into the microphone, his eyes scanning the growing crowd in front of him. He dipped into a stripped-down cover of The Abyssinians “Satta Massagana” and watched as dozens of attendees mouthed along to the words.
“Ladies and gentleman, anywhere you go in the world you’ll find two parts of our culture,” he said of the Afro-Caribbean rhythms he was about to play. “You’ll find storytelling and you’ll find drumming. Storytelling is how traditions pass from one generation to the next, and the drum is the heartbeat.”
That heartbeat flowed through the eighth annual New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival, moved back to the New Haven Green for the first time in several years. After a triumphant return in Goffe Street Park last June, the festival made its way downtown in partnership with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and the Shubert Theatre. It is held each year in June as part of National Caribbean American Heritage Month. This year, hundreds of attendees came out, some from as far as Atlanta, New Jersey, and Brooklyn.
Karaine “Kay” Smith-Holness and Shermaine Edmonds.
Since its beginnings almost a decade ago—the festival went on hiatus in 2020, because of Covid-19—the event has grown to celebrate and feature performances, food, and information from Jamaica, Dominica, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago among others. In the past two years, it has also gained two new cultural allies: Arts & Ideas Executive Director Shelley Quiala, who called it a pleasure to be involved, and Shubert Theatre Executive Director Anthony McDonald. McDonald, the child of Jamaican immigrants, is also a proud member of the Jamaican American Connection.
For organizers Karaine “Kay” Smith-Holness and Shermaine Edmonds, the festival is consistently a chance to convene community and remind people of Connecticut’s rich and evolving Caribbean and West Indian populations.
“I’m having a ball,” said Edmonds, who was born in Dominica and moved to the U.S. when she was 16. “It’s just great to be in downtown New Haven. I think there’s a lot of New Havenites that don’t identify right away that they are of Caribbean descent, so when we do things like this, it draws them out. We’re here, but we’re in separate areas, so we don’t meet everyone all the time.”
“It’s different, and it’s great,” chimed in Smith-Holness, the founder and president of New Haven’s Jamaican American Connection and the owner of Hair’s Kay Salon on Ashmun Street. “I think we have gotten more visibility. We’re seen.”
Everywhere a person looked, there was something to do, eat, peruse, and dance along to. On Temple Street, the smells of jerk chicken, curried goat, oxtail and still-warm beef patties drifted over to vendor tents with homemade skincare products, jewelry, and clothing that flapped in the summer breeze. As the sun rose higher overhead, some attendees juggled ice cold bottles of water, containers of peanut punch and sweet, milky cups of Grape Nuts ice cream that were still frosty on the outside.
Others didn’t seem to mind the heat: at a truck for T.O.P. That BBQ, owner Darryl Pervis served up platter after platter of homemade barbecue, pairing chicken wings, ribs, cheeseburgers and chili dogs with mac and cheese and slaw. It seemed like there was a new customer at the window almost every time he turned around. So too at
On stage, Moses kicked off celebrations with praise for his native Dominica, a Caribbean island known for its lush, emerald green and mountainous landscape and sweeping natural beauty. In a back-and-forth with the audience, he switched between deep, meditative drumming, Caribbean folk songs and his own spoken word poetry.
When he introduced the first folk song—I want a penny to buy/Mango ripe/Mango sweet, he sang—he recalled seeing videos circulating around the web of seedless mangoes.
He smiled at the audience and shook his head at the thought. “Anybody know if you have a good mango the best part of the mango is what?” he said.
“The seed!” attendees cheered back. Moments later, they were dancing to the folk songs “Mango” and “Coconut” as Moses’ voice sailed over the Grass, and kept going on to Temple Street.
Performances were just getting started. There for her seventh festival, 13-year-old dancer Kyndal Rice took the stage to the first notes of “Mama Will Provide,” a song from the musical Once On This Island that celebrates the culture and oral tradition of the Antilles. Dressed in brightly printed blues and yellows, she glided onto the stage, her feet rarely on the ground.
Top: Dancer Kyndal Rice, who has become part of the festival family. Bottom: Karaine Smith-Holness.
To Alex Newell’s muscled voice, she let the music take over, dancing out the promise that nature would catch her if she fell. Her shoulders flexed, undulated, and flew joyfully forward. She jumped into the air, and landed on the balls of her feet and her toes. She extended her arms to their full wingspan, feeling out the warm air around her as she cut through it. She later returned to the stage for a second performance, slowing time itself down as she danced.
A rising freshman at Sacred Heart Academy, Kyndal later said that the number was a tribute to—and celebration of—her heritage as a proud young Jamaican American. Now based in Bridgeport, her maternal grandparents are Jamaican immigrants.
Paula Rice, Kyndal Rice, Kelsey Rice, and William Rice.
Her mother, Paula Rice, recalled growing up in a house that was always full of Jamaican music, spinning on an old-school record player that her father loved. It was he who would dance to the sound of the Caribbean, she said—so it may run in the family. Sunday, she filmed Kyndal’s performances for him to watch later.
After growing up in Bridgeport, Paula Rice met Smith-Holness decades ago, when Hair's Kay was still on Fitch and Blake Streets in the city’s Westville neighborhood. The two became fast friends, she said, and have remained close since. So when Smith-Holness became a founding member of the festival, Rice was excited to attend. She still has a picture of Kyndal as a young child, dressed in a tiny dance outfit at just five or six years old.
“I just enjoy watching her share her talents,” she said as Kyndal rejoined her family and watched Hood Hula’s Diamond Tree take the stage. “When you get to use creativity to share part of your culture, it’s really special.”
On Temple Street, Hartford resident and professional sweet tooth Katurah Andrews handed out frozen treats from her ice cream truck Kravings, painted deep purple and strung with a Jamaican flag in honor of her grandmother. Years ago, Andrews saw a truck for sale on Craigslist and bought it with a cold, delicious small business dream in mind. Now, she’s known for her favors, which range from peaches and cream to strawberry shortcake. She described the Grape Nuts ice cream as a mix between rum raisin and the beloved breakfast cereal.
Growing up in Hartford, Andrews said, she was always proud of her Jamaican heritage. As she handed out popsicles, prepackaged sherbert and cups of ice cream, she praised the festival for bringing awareness to all aspects of Caribbean culture, from food to dance and vocal performance. When she saw the call for vendors earlier this year, she said she was excited to hop on board.
Back on stage, Shenell Edmonds, Tasha Peltier and six-year-old Ava Cooke modeled fashions from Dominica, the stage ablaze in brightly printed fabric as they turned it into a runway. Smiling at the crowd, Peltier pulled the skirt of her dress to its full width, showing off the blooming blue, pink and orange flowers, and lush green fronds on the fabric. Beside her, Ava rocked a dress in red and yellow gingham, pendants swinging from her neck with each small step. On one, the geometric flag of Dominica caught in the light.
Top: Edmonds, Peltier and Ava Cooke. Bottom: Ros and Leighton Johnson of Black Seed Royal.
Looking straight at a tent for the Jamaican American Connection, she struck a pose, her small hands resting squarely on her hips. The audience cheer-screamed in approval. While the look is usually worn with black shoes with a heel, explained a backing track, she went with tiny pink high-tops that seemed just right for the occasion.
As cultural ambassadors of Dominica, Edmonds and Peltier later said they see fashion shows as part of the work they do to spread cultural awareness of the country. It is in their blood: Edmonds grew up in New Haven and Hamden (she is the daughter of Shermaine Edmonds) and Peltier was born in Dominica, and has built a career advocating for the island and its residents. Earlier this year, she was crowned as its first and only female “Calypso monarch.”
“Being in America, culture is what makes us different, and it’s also what brings us together,” Edmonds said.
Dr. Camelia Lawrence with her daughter.
Those words, like Moses’ drum heartbeat, seemed to define the day. Back on the sidewalk taking it all in, Dr. Camelia Lawrence said she was excited to be at the festival, and to see it thriving downtown. A breast surgeon with Hartford Healthcare, Lawrence grew up on Long Island, and moved to New Haven in 2005. She has been part of the Jamaican American Connection for years, through which she became close with Smith-Holness (the two met at an American Friends of Jamaica gala in New York, she said).
Earlier this year, she and a number of JAC members, along with artists and designers from the community, were featured in a Women’s History Month exhibition at Creative Arts Workshop.
For her, she said, the festival is a chance for New Haven’s Caribbean community to gather and celebrate the enduring traditions that connect them to each other, and to a long cultural history. Sometimes, she said, she finds that “we’re all in different silos,” unaware of what colleagues and cultural partners are doing to amplify Caribbean and West Indian voices in New Haven and Connecticut. Her words echoed the festival’s slogan: “Water Divides Us. Culture Connects Us.”
“It’s an opportunity for us to come together and embrace the richness of the culture,” she said. “It’s a partnership. I often say we are stronger together.”
Top: Diamond Tree. Bottom: Christine Bartlett-Josie and Lance Josie.
Music flowed from the stage to where she was standing, and she turned her head to listen for a moment. On the grass, Diamond Tree led an impromptu hula circle as a DJ blasted music. The Braata Folk Singers waited in the wings, prepared to transport the audience with their voices alone. At a nearby tent, Christine Bartlett-Josie and her husband Lance fielded questions about Saint Lucia, from which she hails. A long dress swayed from its place on the tent pole behind her, the wind making its long red skirt flutter for a moment.
In a staging area just beyond the tents, Hamden Academy of Dance & Music owner Lia Davila buzzed between students, making sure four groups of dancers were ready to perform their soca routines. Born and raised in New Haven, Davila has been dancing since she enrolled in gymnastics at Jackie Robinson Middle School, and a teacher told her that she might like dance instead. From classes at Dee Dee’s Dance and Fitness Center to Morris Brown University, she never stopped dancing.
When she finished college, she returned to New Haven and started a studio. She added a “multicultural dance” class in honor of her husband, who hails from the U.S. Virgin Islands. It covers both Afro-Caribbean style—like soca, which originates in Trinidad and Tobago—and American traditions like jazz. Her goal, she said, is to empower students through dance. Almost every year, a group from the studio travels to the Virgin Islands for cross-cultural exchange.
Top: Lia Davila with students from Hamden Academy of Dance & Music. Bottom: Hamden Academy of Dance & Music students.
As young dancers turned the sun-soaked grass into the stage, the audience seemed to grow by two dozen, parents sitting on the grass and standing in between tents. Dancers sailed through numbers, finishing in a game of “follow the leader”—set to music, and without any words at all—that had Davila Christine Bartlett-Josie join her students as they crouched, shimmied, extended their arms and hands, and made backbends look easy. Back at her tend, Bartlett-Josie nodded along to the music.
“I think it’s really important,” she said of the festival, with which she has been involved for years. “It’s about connecting people, and it’s also about realizing that people have come before you. That you do belong here.”
To watch and listen to more from the festival, click on the videos above.