Caribbean Fest Brings Sweet Sound & Celebration To The Green

Top: Soca musician Mical Teja. Bottom: A tent from the Jamaican American Connection (JAC). Lucy Gellman Photos.

The beat was already soaring over the stage when Mical Teja leapt forward, his shoes bright white in the light, and lifted one arm as if to say hello. It was a silent, immediate sign: hundreds of people roared at the sight, jumping up from their seats. At the front, Michelle Cave and Allison Deroche jumped forward, waving the red and black flag of Trinidad & Tobago. The party had officially begun. For some in the audience, it had been going all day. 

Teja’s performance marked the culmination of the ninth annual New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival, held on the upper New Haven Green and Temple Street for the second year in a row. A collaboration among the Jamaican American Connection (JAC), International Festival of Arts & Ideas and an annual planning committee, the afternoon-long festival included music, dance, storytelling, drumming, and food from over a dozen island nations. As if on cue, stormclouds parted just hours before it began, and stayed away all day. 

Karaine Smith-Holness and Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds. 

“Listen, we were going to be here rain or shine,” said Karaine Smith-Holness, who founded the festival in 2014, and is a proud Jamaican American small business owner in New Haven. “We were thinking of it as by the river, the waterfall. But this—” she motioned to the sun soaking the still-damp ground after a morning of heavy rain—“feels amazing. To see the kids smiling and laughing especially.” 

“We’re just here to celebrate us,” added Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds, who hails from Dominica and has worked with Smith-Holness since hearing her on the radio in 2014, and knowing she wanted to get involved. “We [she and Smith-Holness] kind of have one brain when it comes to this.”   

It felt momentous this year, Smith-Holness added. While the Caribbean Heritage Festival has partnered with Arts & Ideas since 2021 (read more about that here and here), this year marked the first time in over five years that a Caribbean artist graced the Green’s main stage, and in 20 that the Festival brought the soca party downtown. Teja, who hails from Trididad and Tobago, is the first soca artist since Machel Montano in 2004.  

Top: Members of Saint Luke's Steel Band. Bottom: Gammy Moses. 

This year, signs of the festival’s growth sprouted in every direction, from new performers onstage to a tent brightly announcing Puerto Ricans United (PRU) with traditional vejigante masks, hand-carved drums and Miss Puerto Rico winners who blended tiaras and traditional bomba skirts.

Introducing the festival, emcee Andrew Clarke stressed the importance of Saturday’s event, which both celebrated and brought together island traditions from across multiple and overlapping diasporas. 

“Trinidad, land of the steel drum!” he said as he squinted through the sunlight, looking over tents that filled the Green with vibrant color. At each mention, different parts of the crowd cheered, making their island known. “Dominica! Jamaica! Saint Lucia! We have Puerto Rico … and Grenada!” He paused at Haiti, letting loose a celebratory “Sak pase?!” when a yell of delight went up from one end of the Green. 

Everywhere, it seemed, there was a story waiting to be told, sometimes many at one time. As performer and environmental educator Gammy Moses took the stage with tales of his native Dominica, attendee Stacy Samuel put the finishing touches on a tent representing Trinidad and Tobago near the stage. 

From the tent, several red, black and white flags flapped in the wind, as if they were proudly announcing the island’s 61 years of independence. Around each side, volunteers Michelle Cave, Samuel and Allison Deroche had added posters, fact-studded brochures, and bright, feathered headdresses and beaded fringe traditionally worn at Carnival. 

A butter-colored poster of Prime Minister Eric Eustace Williams, whose formation of the People’s National Movement (PNM) led to the island’s independence, fluttered in a humid breeze on one side. Every so often, if an attendee got close enough, it seemed like he might say hello and start a conversation. Beneath him, squares of chocolate and garnet-hued tamarind balls quickly disappeared from the wicker baskets where they had been arranged. 

“We want people to know who we are!” said Cave, who left Trinidad for New York with her family when she was a teenager, and moved to Connecticut in 2004. “We have a lot of information this year, because a lot of people don’t know about our island.”

“You know, you can take me out of Trinidad, but you can’t take Trinidad out of me,” she added with a smile. 

Top: Alianys Ayala, Alanna Herbert, Paula Ferguson, Godfrey Ferguson, Yulianet Nevarez and Miriam Magalis Cruz. Bottom: Christine Bartlett-Josie and her husband, Lance Josie, representing Saint Lucia. Bartlett-Josie, who is the only Caribbean political campaign consultant in the state, has been with the New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival since its very early beginnings.  

Back onstage, Moses cycled through several of his songs, highlighting the importance of protecting Connecticut’s waterways from environmental pollution. Between pieces, he said that his own experiences growing up in Dominica influenced the work he does now to care for the environment. As a kid, for instance, he watched his grandmother toss mango peels into the yard when she was finished with the fruit. It was composting before there was a formal word for it. 

“The rhythms I play have been passed down from the ancestors, from one generation to another,” he said. As he played, his wide, outstretched palms spun the songs into story. He later kept that momentum going as he ducked beneath a tent with several pint-sized musicians, and taught a drum class in the day’s rising heat. 

Nearby, Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven winners Alianys Ayala, Alanna Herbert, Yulianet Nevarez and Miriam Magalis Cruz floated through the grass, stopping at several tents to learn about and chat with their Caribbean neighbors. At one, dedicated to the culture of Grenada, they learned from Godfrey and Paula Ferguson that the island nation will be celebrating half a century of independence next year. 

Paula, who came to the U.S. in 1978, later added that former Prime Minister Tillman Thomas is her older brother. She’s been with the Caribbean Heritage Festival since its early stages. 

Dr. Janice Hart—or as she is sometimes better known, Ms. Matty Lou.

At another, Jamaican American storyteller Dr. Janice Hart—or as she is sometimes better known, Ms. Matty Lou—transported them hundreds of miles across the water as she lifted a rounded, banana-leaf katta onto her head, and balanced a large basket atop it, beaming all the while.  

Herbert, a rising junior at Common Ground High School who identifies as both Black and Latina, said she was especially excited to be in a space where she could fully embrace her Afro-Caribbean roots. 

As a kid, Herbert said, her Blackness made her feel “separated” from the lighter-skinned Puerto Rican members of her family, especially those with straight black hair and long, narrow faces. It took her meeting other Black Puerto Ricans, and Black people from across the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, to realize that she wasn’t strange or separate, but beautiful, she said. 

“I realized that we can have afros,” she said. “We can have full lips … People should be informed of our culture.” As a student in accelerated high school programs at Yale, she added, “you don’t see a lot of people like me.” She’s now happy to tell people more about Puerto Rico’s rich and resilient history   

Top: PRU. Bottom: Diamond Tree teaches hula on the grass. 

At PRU’s blue tent, President Joe Rodriguez and Tiana Lee Ocasio chatted with attendees, introducing the organization and its mission, including an upcoming festival of their own on August 12. After meeting members of the Jamaican American Connection on Bassett Street during the Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade earlier this month, Rodriguez said he was excited to be a part of the Caribbean Fest for the first time. 

“It’s amazing!” he said, taking in the sheer amount of art and culture represented in a single space. “We’re just so excited to be here. I think it’s important for people who are not familiar with our culture, which is a blend of African, Taíno Indian and European, to learn about it.”

Around them, artmaking was everywhere. To Hillsong’s “So Will I,” 14-year-old dancer Kyndal Rice glided onto the stage, her movements swift as she looked from side to side, extended her arms, and spun right into a slow run, the blue tulle of her costume billowing out behind her. The granddaughter of Jamaican immigrants, she has often dedicated her performances to them, calling it a way to connect back to her roots.  

Across the Green, Hart celebrated the history and culture of Jamaica, where she grew up in Portland Parish. Motioning to a display of records, old tech equipment, household and culinary items and before her, she methodically picked up a grater, running half a coconut shell along its rounded front edge. At the corner of the table, two paper-mâché dolls from the mid-twentieth century peeked out, as if they were watching the whole process.     

Every Sunday, Hart explained as she demoed the grater, it was customary to grate coconut, mix it with water, and then strain the mixture for fresh coconut milk. She put it down and picked up an old glass kerosine bottle, stuffed with newspaper. Closeby, her book Chat Bout offered poetry for anyone who wanted to stop and read for a while. 

As one of nine kids, she said, it’s her honor to get to share Jamaican culture with the world. Saturday, “there’s no word to describe” what she was feeling, she said. “It’s just a culture that has melted its way into every place you go.” 

When St. Luke’s Steel Band struck up an arrangement of David Rudder’s “High Mas,” she left the tent with the basket still atop her head, and went to dance to the singing, bell-like sound of the pan. Beneath the tent where they played, musicians let the sound celebrate a history of resistance. As their mallets landed on the pans, several danced in place to the lyrics. 

If a listener knew to wait for it, they too could nearly hear Rudder’s exuberant voice—Ou a a oo a a, I love meh country!—through the bouncing sound.

Top: Saint Luke's. Bottom: Attendee Manoucheka Bastien with her sons Eli and Zacariah and mother, Eltha Louis. 

As she listened, attendee Manoucheka Bastien praised the festival for bringing together disparate parents of the Caribbean. Now based in Delaware, Bastien grew up in Haiti, and said she wants her young sons Eli and Zacariah to know where they come from. Saturday, she was in town to visit her mother, and heard about the festival at the last minute. 

“It’s a beautiful place!” she said of Haiti, adding that she wants to fight the outside perception that the island is simply poverty and devastation. Until recently, she and members of her family visited twice a year. So when she heard the words “Caribbean Festival” on Saturday morning, she knew exactly where she wanted to be. 

As the afternoon wound towards its close, Smith-Holness said that she thinks of herself and Cooke-Edmonds—and all of the vendors, artists, storytellers and culinary alchemists present Saturday—as a cultural ambassador. Earlier this summer, she received a note from Marlon Simms, artistic director at the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, praising her work as a cultural ambassador. 

Food included everything from oxtail to vegan jerk tofu and brown stew, with a sweet finish of Grape Nuts Ice Cream back for a second year in a row. 

The words stuck with her. The company performed at the Shubert Theatre, where Smith-Holness is on the board, earlier this month. It marked the first time in New Haven’s history that the group performed in the city (the group last performed in Connecticut in 2004, when they graced the Bushnell Theatre in Hartford).

“That’s how I feel about everybody here,” she said. “Everybody here represents their islands. Earlier today, I saw a little girl in a Saint Kitts and Nevis shirt and I said, ‘See you next year with your own table.’”

That kind of ambassadorship—with a little party and a lot of spirit thrown in—flowed through the evening, as Haitian American artist Berdine Joseph warmed the crowd up for Teja’s soca- and calypso-drenched, jubilant and at times nearly airborne performance. In a mint green, two-piece suit with a cropped top, she looked out over the Green, ready to ring in the last two acts of the night.  

Top: Artist Berdine Joseph. Bottom: Cat Tobias. 

“Do we have Haitians in the building tonight?!” she called out over the Green, smiling into the mic. The orange and yellow beads around her neck caught in the light and glistened. A cheer went up from somewhere on the left side, where a knot of friends stood on a walkway. For the second time in the afternoon, a cool and exuberant “Sak pase!” sailed through the air. She took it as her cue to jam, her vocals smooth. 

As he grooved off to the side—he later joined an all-out soca dance party close to the stage—Moses said he could feel the swell of island pride across the Green, where Caribbean Americans are rarely given recognition for their deep and vast contributions to culture. 

“I got to give it to Arts & Ideas for trying to diversify,” he said. “When I moved to New Haven in 2001, there were a few [Caribbean] acts, but it’s really been a drought.” 

Andrew Clarke.

Back onstage, Joseph jumped from R&B to pop to jazz and back, ending with a bouncing cover of Magic!’s “Rude” that got the crowd dancing. By the time she left, attendees were on their feet, as if they knew what was coming. Before turning the night over to Teja, Smith-Holness, Cooke-Edmonds and Clarke took the stage one more time, their orange shirts glowing beneath the light.

“Y’all ready for the main act?!” Clarke yelled, and a thunderous cheer sailed over the Green. “We have to give the man a bit more energy than that, ya know? Are you all ready? Do I have any Trini people in the house?”

He didn’t even need to ask. From the front rows all the way to the back to an audio tent by the Green’s fountain, flashes of red flew through the air, from where people held flags, sashes, jerseys and visors emblazoned with the island’s flag. A low, synth inflected carpet of sound rolled over the stage. At the steel pan, Kenneth Joseph leaned gently forward, the hint of a smile breaking through his furrowed brows.  

Melissa (who declined to give her last name) with Antony and Barbara Fenton. 

“Where in Trinidad y’all from?” Clarke yelled, and the cheers got louder. “Anyone from Couva? Port of Spain? Anybody from Tunapuna?! Trinidadian people, y’all ready for a good night tonight?” 

Within seconds, Teja was sailing onto the stage, in a blue-and-yellow shirt that channeled the vibrancy of the island, from its crystalline water to its pre-Lenten Carnival traditions. Raising one arm as he jumped, he launched right into his 2022 “Mas,” and it suddenly felt like all of downtown was on its feet. Behind him, singers Nat Lopez and Tyler Cruz launched into a harmonious Woahh-ooh-oh-oh-oh that rolled right off the stage, wrapping the audience in sound. 

“I want to see every flag right now, wave it there! Wave it there!” he said. 

Across the Green, red flags wove through the air—but they were never alone. Moses shimmied his way to the stage, holding the flag of Dominica against his back so that it looked like the Sisserou Parrot at the center was about to take flight. A young girl bounced up and down with a small flag representing Guyana. 

From the lip of the stage, Teja leaned in toward the crowd, and split attendees into sections. The Green, which had already been clapping in time, appeared to be bouncing.     

“Caribbean people, it’s all about togetherness and unity,” he said as he prepared to have them join the chorus of “Mas” in two parts. “Here we go!” 

The Green filled with sweet sound; hundreds of bubbles appeared as Festival Fellows criss-crossed the space with bubble wands, leaning into the magic. Raising one arm, he flowed right into his own take on Rudder’s “High Mas,” rocking back and forth as the music refused to let him stay still. 

In the grass, Cat Tobias and her cousins let the sound transport them. As a proud Trinidadian living in New Haven, she said she was thrilled to see Teja in the spotlight. 

“It’s a great feeling seeing someone from your country up there,” she said. She motioned to her young nieces and nephews, who saw someone who looked like them every time they turned their eyes toward the stage. 

As she listened from the side of the stage, Barbara Fenton joined in on the grater with her husband Antony and friend Melissa (she declined to give her last name). As a proud Trinidadian immigrant—when asked where she grew up, she simply pointed to a red-and-black Trinidad and Tobago visor—"I feel very proud,” she said. 

Back on stage, Teja dipped into soca’s calypso roots (“soca” is itself an acronym for “soul of calypso”) and kept the crowd moving. Jamming from the Green’s walkway, artist Demeree “D” Douglas dubbed the whole afternoon and evening. Raised close to Hartdord’s large West Indian population,, she grew up with soca and dancehall frequently in the background. She added that she’s proud to represent her own Jamaican roots.

“I love it when my people get together,” she said. Onstage, it seemed that Teja was exactly on the same wavelength. 

“I want all my Caribbean people to represent!” he said.  

For more videos from both the festival and the concert, check out the Arts Council's Facebook and Instagram pages.