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ConnCAT Takes It Back To The Harlem Renaissance

Lucy Gellman | August 26th, 2024

ConnCAT Takes It Back To The Harlem Renaissance

ConnCAT  |  Culture & Community  |  Education & Youth  |  Arts & Culture  |  ConnCORP

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Shiloh Peterson. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Shiloh Peterson made his way through a Morse Street gymnasium, taking in the tables and chairs as it transformed into a jazz club. The last slices of afternoon sunlight came through the windows, falling across the floor. For a moment, Peterson stood on a precipice, somewhere in between 1931 and 2024. Then he took a breath and tilted his head toward the ceiling. 

“Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de ho!” he belted, and instantly, the crowd exploded into a joyful call-and-response. 

That sound came to The LAB at ConnCORP on a recent Friday, as students presented “Harlem to New Haven: A Night at the Monterey.” Held in the building’s airy gymnasium, the performance paid homage to Elm City’s rich jazz history, from Dixwell Avenue clubs like Dinky's and the Monterey Café to performances from Hank Bolden, Jesse Hameen, Phil Brown and Michael Mills. Over 150 parents, siblings, friends and family members attended. 

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Top: 11-year-old Chyla Bright at the visual and video arts showcase. Bottom: Sonaii Tart performs. 

It marked the culmination of ConnCAT’s annual summer youth program, a six-week odyssey through the arts that serves almost 80 students from elementary to high school. It is run by Director of Programs Steve Driffin, as well as Youth Programs Assistant Rachel Graziano and several arts instructors working across media.

“When we raise the bar high, our children meet it, right?” said Driffin, who has seen summer cohorts grow into young adulthood, at a “Harlem to New Haven” exhibition opening. “So don’t ever, for the parents that are here, don’t ever drop that bar. They will do it.”

The theme grew out of the program itself, which is now in its 12th year. After a joyous celebration of hip hop last year, staff began thinking about how to celebrate Black New Haven history, layers of which surround ConnCAT’s Science Park hub and nearby sister development on Dixwell Avenue. The answer was a second look at the Harlem Renaissance, with which they rang in the program 12 years ago. 

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Top: Driffin with Dakar Langley. This is not excellence," Driffin said Thursday. “This is a byproduct of excellence. The excellence was five weeks ago. The excellence was the work that we did, the days that we came, the day said they didn’t want to do it, the day said they felt they couldn’t do it, and the days that they fought to accomplish something that they thought they never could create.That to me is excellent. The excellence is work.”Bottom: ConnCAT's Opal Harmon and Jace Jones (a.k.a. Monterey Owner Rufus Greenlee for one night only). 

This time, they added a New Haven twist. In addition to a faithful roster of teachers—William Fluker, Nikki Claxton, and Jasmine Powell are ConnCAT family at this point—Graziano and Driffin enlisted the help of David Burgess, a producer with The Breed Entertainment, and Katelyn Wang, a graduate student at the Yale School of Art. They also brought in Dakarai Langley, a former student of Claxton’s and sophomore at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School who has become a rising star in the city’s dance landscape. 

In six weeks, they turned a cohort of 80 students into budding artists, musicians, and vocalists. Wang took students to the former Monterey Café, inviting them to reimagine it at a time when the building’s future still hangs in limbo. Graziano set up a date for students to see The Wiz on Broadway, in which New Haveners Shayla Caldwell and Avery Wilson shine. In between, program alumni turned teachers like Powell pushed students to learn about Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, James Wells and others.

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Top: Makayla Dawson. Bottom: Jail Rowe-Little. 

“As a theater kid growing up, this is the moment that is full circle to me,” Graziano said after the students' final arts showcase, held over two days and two locations. “This is the highlight. This is what it’s all about.”

As students packed ConnCAT’s second-floor galleries on a recent Thursday night, those words came to life. Standing against one wall, Makayla Dawson posed beside her canvas, in which a sleek, undulating rainbow erupted from the mouth of a trumpet. Inside each bright band of color, figures danced to the music. Quarter and eighth notes swirled in black paint beneath them.

“It’s kind of like, comforting to me to use my imagination,” Makayla said. “It was a really interesting topic. I knew about jazz music, but here, I feel like I learned a lot. It’s really important. Not a lot of places teach kids about our culture.”

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Top: 10-year-old Cassidy Streeter. Bottom: The arts showcase in full swing.

That was also true for 10-year-old Cassidy Streeter, a rising sixth grader at Elm City College Preparatory Academy. In addition to learning about the music of the Harlem Renaissance, she said that she loved getting to make all of her artwork “from scratch” under Powell and Wang’s guidance. 

One gallery over, students had reimagined the old Monterey Café as a still-thriving music joint. In one drawing, the building was cordoned off into multicolored sections, with a rainbow-patterned cafe and purple hi-top tables. In another, it was once again, a spirited piano joint, where shades of blue and purple danced around the wooden bar and grand piano.

In a video nearby, Burgess’ students had rebuilt the jazz score to an animated short, a pianist bringing his cobweb-covered memories to life one note at a time. As it played, fellow students began to stomp, snap, and clap along, an unexpected backing track that made the percussion bloom. 

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“He made a bop-bop!” Langley announced in time with the swinging soundtrack, and soon fellow students were echoing the phrase as if it were an incantation.  

Moments later, 11-year-old Chyla Bright took the spotlight with a refinished score to a scene from Puss In Boots. A rising seventh grader at Highville Charter School, Chyla said she was grateful to both get her feet wet in music production and learn about the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout, she added that she felt extremely supported. 

“Definitely the people I met along the way,” she said when asked about her favorite parts of the program. “They encourage me,” especially when she got stuck. Now, she can see doing sound design as a career. 

For Powell, an alum of the program who has since graduated from Hampton University, the summer represented a chance for her to learn right alongside her students.  

“It was really refreshing,” she said. “I’m always pushing them beyond what they think they’re capable of.” 

“Back To Our Roots”

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Amari Watts as Billie Holiday. 

That excitement was on display again one night later, as students gathered in the LAB’s wide hallways and transformed its second floor into a network of dressing rooms and last-minute lyrical run-throughs. As the audience settled, the whistle of a railroad car floated over the room, transporting attendees back decades to the first half of the 20th century. 

There, Monterey Owner Rufus Greenlee (Jace Jones) and his performance partner Teddy Drayton (Iziaya Martin) had suddenly materialized from thin air, standing before the audience with thousand-watt smiles and suits that kicked it old-school. 

Within minutes, the two were transporting the audience to the Harlem Renaissance through dance, music, and live poetry and jazz. Shimmying like it was 1939, Emelee Follins got the crowd clapping with “Take The A Train,” only for the room to fall to a reverent hush moments later, as dancers glided out to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” With each movement, fists rose across the room.

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ConnCAT2024Show - 56Often, the richest moments of the night were those soaked in reflection and living history, as students pushed the audience to open their eyes and ears to the long legacy of the Harlem Renaissance in New Haven. During a jazz jam session with Bolden, Mills, Hameen and Brown, Mills and rising High School in the Community (HSC) sophomore Zion Pervis had a whole conversation, suspended somewhere in the air between their drums.  

When Amari Watts traded the trumpet for the microphone a few songs later, she delivered a spellbinding version of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” the words winding through the air as the room fell to complete silence. Behind her, a slideshow of racial terror and violence played over the words, reminding attendees how recent the horror of 20th-century lynchings still is. 

So too as Sonaii Tart took the stage for Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” reclaiming the spotlight after nerves had threatened her performance earlier in the evening. Belting from her diaphragm, Sonaii wrapped her voice around the words, until the audience knew exactly what Simone had meant, and she said the sun and the songbirds knew the joy that she was feeling. 

At points, it was also testament to the family ConnCAT has been able to build. Langley, a former student of Claxton’s who is going into his sophomore year at Co-Op, said that it’s been powerful to return as an apprentice and young guest choreographer, helping Claxton with some of the numbers while also choreographing his own work. 

“In my months of being a dance teacher, these kids have been the biggest pains in my neck,” he says to thunderous and knowing laughter Friday. “But I’m so proud of them.”

After the show, several students also noted how much the summer program helped them build confidence on the cusp of a new school year. 

Martin, an aspiring paleontologist and rising freshman at Hamden High, used to suffer from bad stage fright. The performances have helped him get over it— and learn about Black cultural history in the process.

At a table after the performance, Driffin couldn’t stop beaming. 

“I had to impress upon them the importance of going back to our roots,” he said. “I’m elated. The richness of this performance was incredible.”