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Caribbean Fest Dances Into A Decade

Lucy Gellman | July 1st, 2024

Caribbean Fest Dances Into A Decade

Caribbean  |  Culture & Community  |  International Festival of Arts & Ideas  |  Arts & Culture  |  New Haven Green  |  New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival  |  Arts & Anti-racism

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Top: Karaine (Kay) Smith-Holness, Lacy Charles, Olivia Gaspard and Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds. Bottom: Jo. L. during his set. Lucy Gellman Photos.

At one end of the New Haven Green, Jo. L. was giving a history lesson one step at a time. He sailed to one end of the stage, a Haitian flag tucked into his back pocket. “Huge shout out to Toussaint Louverture!” he cried in time with a throbbing beat. Reine Boyer lifted a Haitian flag above her head. “Huge shout out to Dessalines!” he continued. The crowd cheered. 

Finger-picked, lush guitar came over the track behind him. “Jamaicans, do you know who Boukman is?” The word Guerriér—warrior, in both French and Haitian Creole—peeked out from his shirt. “We led the first successful slave rebellion with the help of a Jamaican leader called Boukman! Jamaicans, if you don’t know who Boukman is, please make sure you Google it!”     

Saturday afternoon, that performance captured the infectious joy and deep island pride of the 10th annual New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival, held on the New Haven Green on the final weekend of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. A celebration of the depth and diversity of the Caribbean, it brought in hundreds of attendees, with representation from well over a dozen island nations and territories in the Caribbean and West Indies. 

“We did it!” said Jamaican American Connection Founder and President Karaine (Kay) Smith-Holness, who founded the festival in 2014 and has steered it through a global pandemic and move downtown. “June is Caribbean Heritage Month, so we have no choice but to celebrate our culture during this month … We are using this as a way to show other people, like, ‘Hey, we can come together and be happy.’”

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Top: Members of the Colihaut Boyz, who hail from Dominica by way of New York City. Bottom: Designer Najah Josie.

“We’re in the middle of New Haven, and we’re thankful that our community that was with us at Goffe Street, followed us down here and brought more people,” added co-organizer Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds, who hails from Dominica and has worked with Smith-Holness since hearing her on the radio in 2014. “It’s about visibility. Here we are—you see all of us together.”  

Saturday, a decades-long vision came to life in vibrant color, as hundreds of flags became a dazzling patchwork against the low-hanging sky. As Braata Productions’ Andrew Clarke welcomed performers to the stage, organizers fanned out across the space and ducked beneath tents meant to educate attendees, from bright, feathered costumes worn at Mas to vegan fish curry and Grapenut ice cream. 

Representing Saint Lucia for the first time—it’s usually her parents who take up the educational mantle—28-year-old designer Najah Josie buzzed between a series of hand-sewn blouses, her hands grazing the soft, bright fabric as she chatted with attendees. Born and raised in New Haven, Josie loved “everything in the arts” from a young age, she said—but it was her Caribbean heritage that instilled in her an interest in fashion. 

That happened on both visits to the island and during one longer stay, she explained. At 13, Josie attended high school in Saint Lucia for two years, spending time with family as she navigated the island’s educational system. After learning to sew in a home economics class, she fell in love with design and craft. The earliest seeds of her brand, Najah Nialah, were born. 

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Top: Carline Williams,  Shavana Clarke's mom, shares her crown for a moment. Bottom: Students from Hamden Academy of Dance and Music, which has become a fixture at the festival.

Fifteen years later, she’s growing her business one hand-sewn piece at a time. After a temporary pandemic pivot to masks with Caribbean-inspired names like “Rum Punch” and “Saint Lucia," she is working largely on blouses, tops, and dresses on commission, each piece custom made for a client. While she has her own style, she said, she’s especially inspired by designers like Fe Noel, whose Grenadian roots influence her work. 

“I’m really proud of my heritage,” Josie said, gesturing to bright, candy-colored plaids, florals, and the quintessential Saint Lucia Madras that remind her of where she comes from. When she sits down to sew, she’s able to connect back to her roots, and the island that helped raise her.  

As she made her way through the crowd, that was also true for Miss Connecticut Shavana Clarke, a first-generation Jamaican American whose ties to the island informed her choice to run for the title. Growing up in New York City, Clarke felt close to Jamaica, and especially to aunts and uncles in Parish with whom she would spend the summers. Her mother, who immigrated at 24, made sure she never felt too far from it.  

On her visits back, “I loved tying up the goats, going in the river,” she said with a smile that spread across her whole face, as if she was suddenly back there. Back in New York, Clarke started to compete in pageants, and Miss U.S.A. became a fixture in her home. She excelled in school, ultimately heading to UConn to pursue acting. 

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Top: Miss Connecticut  Shavana Clarke. Bottom: Katurah Andrews, who sells out of Grapenut ice cream at her truck, Kravings LLC, every year. 

Then in 2019, when South African actress and producer Zozibini Tunzi won Miss Universe, she began to see herself as part of something bigger. Suddenly, she realized that intersectionality needed to be part of her platform, and her approach to everything from the stage to the classroom. 

“I thought, ‘I can do that!’” she recalled as a tent from Dominica exploded into sudden, inexplicable cheers behind her, the air suddenly filled with streaks of green and yellow. “When people think of Connecticut, they don’t think about Jamaicans,” despite a huge immigrant population from the Caribbean. 

“A huge part of my platform is talking about what it means to be Jamaican American,” she continued. She knows that “little girls from the West Indies” might be watching her, and wants to let them know that they can climb to the same heights in whatever they want to do—whether it’s representing Connecticut or taking on a leadership role in their professional lives. 

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Top: Tiana Ocasio, Juancarlos Soto, Joe Rodriguez and Alana Rodriguez of Puerto Ricans United rep the island for the second year in a row. Bottom: The audience grows throughout the afternoon.

Back onstage, emcee Andrew Clarke had the audience under his spell, weaving in and out of patois as he spoke. Between jokes (“Where are people from? We’re not including Long Island, okay?”), he celebrated milestones in Caribbean history, from Grenada’s 50 years of independence this year to the importance of proverbs specific to one’s country.  

“Poke ah poke!” someone at the front of the stage yelled out, lifting the familiar red-and-black flag of Trinidad and Tobago over their head for a moment. 

“What dat mean?” Clarke asked. He leaned in to hear the response, nodding as the mic returned to his mouth. He looked out at the audience with a glint in his eye. “That means, ‘What’s sweet and good!’” he exclaimed. 

“Ke Lo Ke!” another voice shouted from the audience, a sea of lawn chairs and strollers that had formed haphazard rows in front of the stage. The phrase, which comes from the Dominican Republic and riffs on "Qué lo que," translates loosely to “What’s up?” 

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Top: Reine Boyer. Bottom: Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds with a festival volunteer.

Boyer, who grew up in Hartford but was born in Haiti, never strayed far from the stage. An attorney and fierce advocate for human rights in and outside of work, she said she was thrilled to be out the festival repping Haiti, which Jo. L. affectionately referred to as a “big little island” with a history of rebellion and resistance. 

When he pronounced the name in Creole, rather than English—Ha-i-ti—Boyer cheered. As she moved to the front of the stage, she waved a handheld Haitian flag while wrapping another around her shoulders like a superhero cape.  

“We’re having a good time!” she said as she raised her voice over the music. For her, repping Haiti means educating people about the first Black Republic—and what it means to continue fighting for Black liberation in the Caribbean and the U.S.  “I am so proud to be Haitian.”

At times, the magic seemed to flow from the stage right to the grass, and back to the stage again, cutting through the humidity that had descended on the afternoon. In one moment, it was students from Hood Hula, who took an impromptu spin on the stage as Diamond Tree conducted from the grass,

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Top: Students who worked with hula hooper Diamond Tree. Bottom: Santana Brightly and Arden Santana. 

In another, Jo. L. taught attendees about Kompa, a mélange of Dominican méringue and a Haitian barrel drum called the tanbou.

“If you’re not familiar with Kompa, it’s a little two-step,” he said, looking out over a crowd that seemed, initially, hesitant. “You don’t gotta be Haitian, just give me a little two-step.”      

On the grass, people started to dance, some swaying from their seats when standing proved too much. From a closed-off Temple Street, The Elements of Abundance rolled in, dancing even as they entered the festival. With her daughters just steps behind her, Arden “Fire” Santana swayed back and forth, a whisper of méringue taking root in her feet.      

“Hold on, we’re just getting started,” Jo. L. exclaimed, smiling, and Santana picked up the pace. “Right now, we’re about to turn it up. Grab your asthma pump, get your water!”

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Top: Elaine Peters and her Chihuahua, Coconut. Bottom: More from the Colihaut Boyz.

When his music cut out one track later, it also reminded attendees of how collaborative the festival has become, a testament to organizers’ bridge-building in New Haven and New York. Within seconds, the Colihaut Boyz—a group of cousins from Dominica, who now reside in New York City—had materialized, huge drums slung over their chests. 

At the center of the group, Jefferson Laville lifted a long silver horn, and began to play. In every note was a history that criss-crossed space and time, telling the story of independence as the group played. 

“It’s something we do for our hearts,” Laville later said of playing music, noting the drums’ ability to connect him to centuries of history. “It means a lot to us. We try our best to keep our culture … we carry it everywhere we go.” 

Onstage, the party showed no sign of stopping. Taking the stage to Alison Hinds’ “West Indian,” 11-year-old Olivia Gaspard listened for a Soca beat, and let her knees do the talking as it dropped and floated over the grass. Minutes before stepping into the spotlight, she had called the chance to dance “an honor” and a chance to share her Barbadian heritage in the heart of New Haven.  

“It’s everything,” said her mother, Sherina Gaspard, who came to Connecticut from Barbados at 11 years old. “It [opportunities like the festival] gives us an opportunity to bond. We get to share different parts of our culture.”

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Olivia Gaspard: An honor. 

As they watched the festivities unfold, Smith-Holness and Cooke-Edmonds were rarely still, moving between vendor tents even as they nibbled on grapenut ice cream and checked in on everything from body butter soursop smoothies. It was only for an interview late in the afternoon that they stood for a moment behind the stage, sound wrapping around them as it floated out towards Chapel Street. 

For both of them, the festival now represents a decade of transformation and growth—and a commitment to keeping it going. After starting the event in Goffe Street Park in 2014, the two brought it through a pandemic, expanded partnerships with the Shubert Theatre and International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and made the move downtown. 

For the second year in a row, it included a culminating concert, this time from the artist Lyrikal, that brought hundreds to the Green.

“We are happy,” Smith-Holness said. “We share customs. It’s a way for us to come together.”

That extended to people like 10-year-old self-appointed apprentice Lacy Charles, who has known Smith-Holness for her whole life through Hair’s Kay Beauty Salon. Growing up Jamaican and Dominican in Connecticut, Lacy said she likes the festival for the range of people and nationalities that it brings out. 

“I feel like I learned how to work with people more,” she said.