Destiny Cooper, Gianni Knox, Dr. Hanan Hameen, and Madison Ennis. Lucy Gellman Photo.
Madison Ennis fitted the djembe squarely between her knees, palms flat on the goatskin. Around her, a dozen peers were transforming into storytellers, ready to turn the room into a heartbeat. Several more in the audience clapped. As the drum exploded into sound, she channeled a history that goes generations deep, crossing oceans and centuries with her hands alone.
Wednesday morning, Ennis joined hundreds of students at James Hillhouse High School for the inaugural “Africa Fête,” a new partnership between the New Haven Public Schools, Artsucation Academy Network and the youth arts initiative Sunu Thiossane in Dakar, Senegal. As it unfolded in Hillhouse's large auditorium, it showcased the arts as a path to global literacy, particularly for students who may not otherwise learn pre-colonial, colonial and current West African history.
“When you are dancing, when you are singing, when you are drumming, when you are saying certain words, it’s more than just a step,” said Artsucation founder Hanan Hameen, who grew up between the Bronx and New Haven, and now spends the year between Senegal and the U.S.. “This is somebody’s life. It’s somebody’s culture. It’s somebody’s day-to-day, somebody’s history.”
Designed as a form of cross-cultural exchange, the program took shape last year, after Hameen connected with NHPS World Languages Supervisor Jessica Haxhi over a hot chocolate at Pistachio. By then, she had already been working to build a program with Mamedjarra Diop, who runs Sunu Thiossane—but the two were struggling due to a lack of funding.
Haxhi, who has worked to grow the district's lingual and cultural footprint, found Title I dollars to support the exchange. Originally, “the goal was to have online exchanges with the French classes,” she said. It started to grow from there.
Hameen set up days to teach in the schools, connecting with both French and dance classes (a colonial holdover, French remains the official language of Senegal, even though Wolof is much more commonly spoken among the population). The curriculum is the one she uses in her Artsucation and “Africa Is Me” classes: part history, part language, and all experiential learning, with lessons in West African drumming and dance. In addition to Hillhouse, she piloted the program at King-Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School and Clemente Leadership Academy.
She and teachers persevered through several bumps along the way, she said. When New Haven classes tried to connect with students in Senegal, their plan was upended by violence that broke out between police and protesters last summer, and continued into the early months of this year. In the country, protesters were responding to the government's abrupt suspension of the presidential election, followed by its country-wide shutdown of WiFi and internet access.
The election ultimately took place in late March of this year. Back in New Haven, the program was still unfolding. Hameen praised Hillhouse teachers Dr. Abdoulaye Salami and Millette Núñez for their support.
"It's really sharing the cultural values, the belief system of other people," said Salami, who came to the U.S. from Togo in 2003 and has been teaching French at Hillhouse for 17 years. "We're trying to connect these young people to African traditions. It's opening their minds to what's out there."
Wednesday, Hameen's vision sprang to life with vibrant African drumming, solo and ensemble dance, some on-the-fly language learning (did you know you've probably had some version of Thieboudienne?) and a performance from the Hillhouse Marching Band. Within moments of walking onto the stage—"so I literally got off the plane last night, let's do this!"—she was calling volunteers up to join, where a half-moon of drums sat waiting for 15 pairs of hands.
"Ago!" she called out as conversation buzzed through the auditorium, making it hard to focus on the stage. In Twi, which is spoken in Ghana, the words translate to "Are you listening?"
The auditorium quieted. "Amé!" members of the audience called back, some voices chirping the reply. The word translates to "Yes, I am listening!"
As students took the stage, Hameen split the auditorium into three sections, clapping out different beats for each. One, a five count for students at stage right—bah-bah-bah bah bah—caught on immediately. Another, three succinct claps at stage left, took a moment to register. Motioning to the center of the room, Hameen sounded out a third, her hands fluttering as palms came together and then apart just as quickly.
A rippling Pah-puh/Pah-puh joined the swirl of sound. Beaming, Hameen took a seat at the center of the group and began to drum. From a single, steady rhythm, she broke away, making her drum talk. To her right, teacher Patrick Robertson jumped in, palms moving so quickly that some students stopped what they were doing to cheer and chirp appreciatively.
Just three seats to his left, Ennis burst into a smile and picked up the pace. As she played, the drums sang, connecting her to something greater than herself.
She thought about her grandmother, who left Kingston, Jamaica for the U.S. when she was just eight years old. She thought about her own family, and how she'd been taught to be proud of her Blackness while growing up between Harlem and New Haven. She thought about making her way out of Hillhouse and into the world, which she will when she graduates this June. After high school, she plans to study cosmetology, she said.
"It was a great experience," Ennis said afterwards, as the auditorium emptied out and students hustled to their third period classes. "I think this is something we need to see more of. When we see things like this, it brings us closer together."
Those words echoed as students took the stage to dance, many dressed with bright, wax-printed cloth that mirrors the kitenge and ankara fabrics worn in East and West Africa. As drums, shakers and cowbell oozed from a speaker somewhere offstage, students began to move, their arms and legs in constant motion. Knees bent. Arms flowed out into the air, full of purpose as students expanded to their full wingspan. To cries of "yeeees!" from their classmates, they turned on the balls of their feet, drums flowing through them.
At the lip of the stage, junior Gianni Knox soaked in the moment. At Hillhouse, she said, students don't otherwise get a chance to learn about the history and depth of African arts and culture. With a simple dance class, Hameen flipped the script.
"Africa doesn't get enough recognition, and the fact that it's just like—it's more than what people perceive Africa [to be]," Knox said. "It's very beautiful. It deserves to be shared and portrayed in the way that it is."
"I feel like, the things that you are accustomed to and the things that you are around, that is not your only option," she added. "So if you are looking for other opportunities, then they will definitely come to you. Don't just look at one thing."
Senior Destiny Cooper agreed. At first, she said, she'd been nervous to dance in front of her peers—but the nerves faded away as the music carried her. Like Knox, she said that she was grateful for a chance to show her school, herself, and New Haven in a positive light, at a time when "there's a lot of judgment" around what it means to be a young Black woman.
That's part of the program's hope, Hameen said. When she teaches in the schools, she's trying to fight the racism and white supremacy, both overt and internalized, that she sees in New Haven and in the U.S. more generally. Multiple times Wednesday, she stressed the need for unity among Black people, peppering the presentations with anecdotes from her own childhood in the Bronx.
Growing up, she said, she could go to one floor of her apartment building, and might smell arroz con gandules that Puerto Rican and Dominican families were making for dinner. One floor up, that same dish would be beans and rice, spiced one way if the family had roots in the South, another if folks were from the North. A few floors up, her Jamaican neighbors were making rice and peas.
"It's all the same," she said. In Senegal, she continued, she can see the origin of those dishes: Thiébou Dienne (fish and rice) or Thiébou Yapp (meat and rice) form the foundation of cuisine. "Don't let them divide you. No more 'I'm from Newhallville, I'm from Dixwell.' What, you cross the street and you different?"
"African people are the first people on the planet," she had said earlier to cheers, and the words remained after the audience had left. "Your melanin is worth more than gold."