With a Jamaican flag wrapped tightly around her shoulders, Patricia Gardner seemed to glow in the sunlight. From the stage, the first notes of Jill Scott’s “Golden” bounced over the crowd, and a handful of listeners began to bob in place. Gardner’s mom, Lisa Hardy-Gardner, pulled out her phone and pressed the record button. Ooohh-oh-oh, Gardner crooned into the mic, ready to go.
In just a few hours, she would turn 14 years old. And she knew, even before finishing the song, that her late grandmother Daphne was looking down and smiling.
That sound came to the New Haven Green last Sunday, as WeDehYah, Inc. and the Jamaican American Connection (JAC) celebrated the city’s 12th annual New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival, a collaboration with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The brainchild of Karaine “Kay” Smith-Holness and Shermaine Cooke-Edmonds, who hail from Jamaica and Dominica respectively, the event became a bright celebration of food, culture, and music that went well into the evening.
Sunday, it fell on the last day of Arts & Ideas, which since 2021 has provided sponsorship and support, and the final weekend of National Caribbean American Heritage Month. As in recent years, it culminated with a concert on the festival’s large stage, featuring artists Joel El Chèlbè and Denise Belfon. That’s still a big deal, Smith-Holness noted: New Haven spent years without a Caribbean performer on the Green, despite a large Caribbean and West Indian population in the city and the state.
Top: Karaine (Kay) Smith-Holness and Shermaine Cooke Edmonds. Bottom: The crowd on the Green before Denise Belfon takes the stage.
“I’m always at a loss for words,” said Smith-Holness, who has organized the festival for over a decade, and in that time also grown JAC’s footprint as a force for good and creative collaborator in the city. “You know, this is always about the community. This is for the community.”
From sun-soaked vendor tents to an array of performers, that community was on full display from the early afternoon well into the evening. Around the Green, vendor and info tables represented the breadth of a diaspora, with stations from Barbados and Guyana that are relative newcomers to the festival, and green-and-black clad tents for Jamaica that have been there as long as the festival itself. Beyond them, a second half-moon of tents offered items like clothing, jewelry, and social service information for attendees.
At a table heavy with instruments from Dominica, WeDehYah member and outdoor educator Gammy Moses let his hands hover momentarily over a bèlè drum, the skin taut against his palm as they touched down, and he described a traditional dance of the same name. Around him, books and maps peeked out curiously, enough to transport a person to the mountainous, lush island country that raised him.
For Moses, currently the student affairs manager at Common Ground High School, the Caribbean Heritage Festival is part of his story as an immigrant. In 2005, he came to New Haven from Dominica, 20 years old and curious about the city he was about to call home. At first, “it was quite an experience,” he remembered with a smile at the edges of his voice. New Haven was so different from the home he had left.
Top: Gammy Moses. Bottom: Lincoln and Emory Dorman and Aralia (Lia) Heggs, representing Guyana. This year, Heggs offered trivia, as well as information about food, recipes, and history.
Then at some point, he realized that New Haven had its own revolutionary history, including the 1970 Black Panther Trials and the 1839 Amistad trials, which the New Haven Museum and fellow artists, historians, and cultural organizations have worked to tell the story of (and more recently, reimagine) for decades. He connected with organizers and nature-based educators. He saw some of the social justice work that was unfolding in the city. It was one way that he found “that village type of life” amidst the chaos of a new city.
In New Haven, his lifelong reverence for nature—and belief that humans can and must be in better relationship with the world, and with each other—has guided him in all that he does, including performances with the Caribbean Heritage Festival and his work in restorative justice and Kingian nonviolence. So when Smith-Holness asked him to roll up years ago—and then keep rolling up, which he has for over a decade—it was an easy yes. It always is.
“I think we want people to know that the Caribbean … every island is unique,” he said before going on stage, where he dipped into traditional songs that he’s known since he was a boy. “That’s the beautiful thing about diversity, right? You can learn from other cultures.”
Top: PRU volunteers Alyah Rodriguez, Juancarlos Soto and David Kripps, who works as a paramedic for his town and has family that hails from Southwestern Puerto Rico. Bottom: Hood Hula Founder Diamond Tree.
Nearby, volunteers from Puerto Ricans United, Inc. gathered beneath a flag-festooned tent as winners of the organization’s annual cultural pageant prepared to take the stage. Over flyers for the annual Puerto Rican festival, prints by artist-activist Juancarlos Soto dotted the table, with nods to Puerto Rican history that also brought the past into the present.
In one, a young boy struggles to hold up a large, full water jug, the plastic a light and luminescent blue against his skin. His shoulders strain and slump with the weight, his feet barely leave the ground. Soto said that it’s intended to bring attention to the ongoing water crisis on the island that has left tens of thousands of people without clean water to cook, clean, or even drink.
“We just want water,” Soto said. It’s not complicated, he added—at least not if people think that water is a basic human right. “We want access to clean, safe water and all that good stuff.”
Davis and Byrd.
A few tents away, Hamdenite Jameson Davis slipped into a conversation with Devon “Different” Byrd, who spotted a button maker, leaned in over a piece of paper, and immediately began working on a design. The president of the African American Society, tucked onto Hamden’s Manila Street off Dixwell Avenue, Davis said that he’d come out to both support WeDehYah, Inc. and show attendees that the society is for them, wherever they are in their diasporic journey.
“It’s about connecting to a diaspora,” he said, showing off a button machine he’d brought to let attendees flex their creativity. “Whether people are immigrants or not, it’s letting them know that they have a home here.”
In the past few years, the society has become a fixture at the festival and in the region, where it is able to spread the word about upcoming events. Last year, for instance, the group focused on raising awareness around a then-upcoming “Know Your Rights” training specifically for immigrants across the Caribbean, African and West Indian diasporas (read more about that here). This year, Davis is working to tell the community about an 83-acre farm in Litchfield County for which the society has been able to secure a seven-year lease.
Top: Winners of the Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven Pageant sport their cultural costumes. Bottom: Gardner (right) and her mom, Lisa Hardy-Gardner.
As the afternoon warmed up, Gardner prepared to perform for the first time, running over “Golden” as she kept an eye on the program. Around her, the festival was humming: attendees bounced eagerly from table to table as emcee Kenney Facey walked amongst them, doing short interviews in the field. On stage, DJ Fire kept the beat going. Near the stage, a single hula hoop from Diamond Tree had magically multiplied, and shrieks of laughter bubbled up from kids learning the craft for the first time.
A rising freshman at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, Gardner has been singing for as long as she can remember, she said—but took a pause after her grandmother, Daphne Blair, passed away two years ago. Sunday marked the first time she’d be back in front of an audience, and she was feeling ready.
“I’m a little nervous, but excited,” she said. During Blair’s life, which began in Kingston, Jamaica and ended at Yale New Haven Hospital last year, Gardner found both a staunch supporter and a fellow songbird, who taught her firsthand about her Jamaican heritage. While she kept taking lessons—Gardner studies with the musician Manny James Sorrels—it was often her grandmother’s song and story that she came back to.
Top: Stacy Samuel and Cleve Cooper. Bottom: Don Jackson and his daughter, Aaliyah.
As she came to the stage, listeners could feel that energy in the warm air, a small crowd gathering in front of the stage. As the music began, Gardner swayed from side to side, letting herself ease into the melody. When she lifted the mic to her mouth and began to sing, Sorrels was right there, singing along. By the second verse, her shoulders had loosened, the vocals so natural it seemed she could have done it in her sleep.
“She’s incredible!” Sorrels said afterwards, still smiling from watching Gardner set an ebullient tone for the afternoon. “We’re working really hard to make sure she believes in herself—it’s about being confident enough to stand onstage and own who she is as an artist.”
As they applauded behind all make and manner of sequins, large, bright feathers and beaded shoulder- and headpieces, Wyldfyre Mas’ Cleve Cooper and Stacy Samuel beamed, welcoming attendees to their station as they spoke about their native Trinidad and Tobago, and ability to teach people about West Indian traditions through fashion, food, art and literature. Every so often, they paused to look out at the stage, where a rotating door of acts had begun to perform.
“It’s about being able to share culture and heritage,” said Cooper, who grew up Mayaro, in Trinidad and Tobago, and adored celebrations of Mas. “I always loved the culture of Carnival, of dressing up … it was something I wanted to do.”
Top: Shenell Edmonds, who came out with her sister Deonne. Bottom: Sisters Jerry and Jailyn Ram.
When Cooper moved to Connecticut in 2005, then just 24 years old and brand new to life as an immigrant, he held onto that love for Trinidadian arts and culture. Now, he works closely with designers on the costumes, and with Wyldfyre organizers like Samuel on planning events.
“We’re sharing our culture with them and trying to create a legacy,” Samuel added.
As Jamaica-raised Facey kept the momentum going onstage, twin sisters Jerry and Jailyn Ram said they were both there to support their family’s heritage, with parents who hail from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
While the two are based just a town away in Orange, both said it was their first festival. When they heard that artist Denise Belfon would be playing the Green later in the night, both gasped and dissolved into giggles. Jerry suggested that they text their mom, to see if the family could stay for the concert.
“It’s about keeping it [heritage] alive and passing it on to our children,” Jailyn said. “It’s nice to see the representation.”