Top: Gala committee chair Krystal Jackson, JAC President Karaine (Kay) Smith-Holness, and keynote speaker Dr. Mayasa Akbar, who was an early trailblazer honoree herself. During her keynote speech, Akbar—whose family hails from the Dominican Republic—spoke about the breadth of the Caribbean diaspora and the importance of mental health. Bottom: Kareem Thompson and Duane Huff. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The sound of the steel pan rang out across the second floor of the Omni, making its way to the ballroom before the doors were even open. Over the carpet and wood-paneled walls, it was a balm, round and bright as laughter. Around the corner, it drifted through the air as friends hugged in clouds of taffeta and chiffon, silk and charmeuse.
Back the drums, Kareem Thompson and Duane Huff put their whole bodies into the sound, backs rocking as their shoulders bobbed, knees bent and necks swayed back and forth. By the time they had gotten to the hook of Kes’ “Hello,” carried on the bell-like sound, it was impossible not to dance along.
That commitment to ebullient, unrestrained and sometimes thunderous joy—and a reminder that people can and should lean on each other—made its mark at the Jamaican American Connection's (JAC) 13th annual trailblazer and scholarship gala, held Saturday night at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale. The event raised thousands of dollars for JAC’s scholarship program, building on the $16,000 that the organization was able to raise and distribute last year.
In addition, “Trailblazer” honorees included lifelong New Havener Jamilah Prince-Stewart, the founding executive director of Faith Acts for Education, and Dr. Rosemarie Ingleton, a dermatologist with a focus on treating Black women who is based in New York City. JAC also surprised additional “honorary” Jamaicans, including Possible Futures owner Lauren Anderson.
“That changes we make and the lives we change with scholarships, it’s very fulfilling,” said gala committee chair Krystal Jackson, who has been a member of JAC for roughly six years. “I feel like the support and mentorship we’re able to give can help them [scholarship recipients] move in the right direction.”
Top: New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival Co-Founder Shermaine Edmonds and emcee Andrew Clarke. Bottom: Rev. Dr. Janice Hart, who has become an integral part of JAC and helps pass on Jamaican culture and history through her performances and speeches. Saturday, she said that she values the group's commitment to an intergenerational membership, which "will allow the organization to thrive."
“It’s surreal,” added JAC Founder and President Karaine (Kay) Smith-Holness. In the past year alone, the group has celebrated Caribbean music and culture on the Green, held golf tournaments and community dinners, built new partnerships and helped the American Friends of Jamaica bring Amalgamation to the Shubert Theatre. “We’ve grown each year, and been able to strengthen our community. Everyone comes in like they’re family.”
That sense of an extended family was everywhere Saturday, from a buzzing second floor lobby to the Omni’s ballroom, where DJ Fire (a.k.a. Tafari Turner, a previous scholarship recipient) spun sizzling soca, calypso, EDM and reggae that lasted well into the night. Beside the stairs to the event, steel pan rose in waves, the sound ebullient. Every so often, Huff dabbed his brow with a handkerchief, wiping off beads of sweat that had appeared across his forehead.
Raised in New Haven—he grew up off Whalley Avenue, on Dickerman Street—Huff was a percussionist long before he discovered steel pan in 1990. As a kid, he played jazz and R&B, learning the drums before he had finished elementary school. By high school, he was serious about percussion, he said. He dedicated himself to learning, no idea that a key change was just beyond his horizon.
When he was around 30, Huff was living in Delaware and crossed paths with a Trinidadian musician who taught him about the steel drums. Maybe it was musical kismet: he was born in 1962, the same year that Trinidad gained its independence from the British crown. But something stuck. He has played in many spaces, including as the owner of Caribbean Vibe Steel Drum Band LLC, ever since.
“I sweat and I dance and I love it!” Huff said. Each time he plays, he’s bound to a history of resistance that stretches from the West Indies to Brooklyn, a music that seems both timeless and made for this moment in time. “Listening to that pan, I just feel euphoric.”
Dr. Kimala Bisasor-Williams and her daughter, scholarship recipient Surita Williams.
As he and Thompson played, the sound drew out a cross-cultural history that has become fundamental to the spirit of the gala itself. In the 1930s—three decades before formal independence from the British crown—people in Trinidad and Tobago began using the concave metal bases of oil drums to create percussive sound. What began out of necessity stuck: steel pans are now a widely used and celebrated art form across the Caribbean diaspora, including in New Haven and Connecticut.
Around a corner, scholarship recipient Surita Williams floated through the space, glowing with excitement. A freshman at Brown University, Williams grew up in Hamden, but hails originally from Mandeville, in Manchester Parish in Jamaica. Growing up, her family never let her forget where she came from. Now, she’s pushing forward to honor their roots—and hers.
“It’s something that I’m proud of,” she said, bathed in the low, purple glow that filled the ballroom before the ceremony. “It was a certain way of viewing obstacles, challenges as opportunities to grow. It was always about being a better version of yourself, not comparing yourself to others and never giving up.”
This year, scholarship recipients include Williams, Kearlzel-Monet Marquis, Gabrielle Day, Cyan Young, and Danielle Ricketts. Between them, there are five different schools, including Brown and Yale Universities, and interests that revolve around medicine, STEM and healthcare. Or in Smith-Holness’ words, “the future of JAC is bright.”
Williams embodies that future, even in a political climate that is working against her. At Brown, she is studying neuroscience, with plans to continue with graduate and professional work in the field after she graduates. When she’s not in the classroom, she’s running track and field for the university (she sleeps when she can, she joked). In a country where women are often discouraged from STEM—under 30 percent of people in the field are women, and even fewer are women of color—she’s flipping the script.
“Being a scholarship recipient means I can be part of the change,” she said as she gave her mom, James Hillhouse High School Assistant Principal Dr. Kimala Bisasor-Williams, a smile. “They’re trying to give us an opportunity.”
Top: Trailblazer honoree Dr. Rosemary Ingleton and Christopher Benjamin, community relations officer at the Consulate General of Jamaica in New York. Bottom: Clarke in action.
Inside the ballroom, attendees fêted the full breadth of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, making time and space for each other amongst plates of blackened chicken, fish and tofu with plantains, callaloo sautéd until it was tender, and rice and beans. Amidst a few nervous jokes (“I’m studying just in case they give us the citizenship test again,” said emcee Andrew Clarke, who runs Braata Productions), they shouted out their respective countries, adding a laugh line for the far-away archipelago of Long Island.
At one point, a bandana emblazoned with the flag of Trinidad and Tobago went up with a whoop at one of the back tables. At another, voices joined in on the Jamaican National Anthem, “Jamaica, Land We Love,” until they wove between horns and cymbals that came from a loudspeaker. At a third, Clarke pulled out a dog-eared, faded green folder, tracing the evolution of both JAC and his own career as an artist and entertainer.
Years ago, the organization’s gala was the first he ever emceed. Now, both of them have grown up. “Look at JAC now!” he exclaimed.
Prince-Stewart, there with her husband, Kolé Mascoll and their two small children, Leona-Naomi and Kolé, pointed to that growing sense of a Caribbean family as part of JAC’s strength. While she grew up in New Haven, Prince-Stewart is a daughter of both Barbados and Nevis, with a cultural background that is still woven into her life and her work as a community organizer and faith and nonprofit leader.
Top: Jamilah Prince-Stewart with her husband, Kolé Mascoll, and their two small children, Kolé and Leona-Naomi. Bottom: Former New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, who is a board member for Faith Acts for Education.
As a kid, she watched her grandfather, Jerome Sylvester Prince, Sr., help run the Antillean Friendly Association on Kensington Street. Decades later, she’s working to pass her culture on to her kids, including in events like Saturday’s. She sees how JAC recognizes the breadth of and power within a diaspora—and is doing the work of supporting the next generation of scholars to keep it going.
“I think it’s extremely important, especially during these times, to tell these young people that they matter, and that there are resources to support them,” she said, noting how hard it can be to find and secure resources when paying for the sheer cost of college. “It changes their lives.”
Prince-Stewart, who worked for the Hartford Youth Scholars Foundation after graduating from Yale, knows that firsthand. Her mom, Geraldine Prince, worked two jobs seven days a week to give her daughter access to education and opportunities that she didn't have. After stints at Hartford Youth Scholars and ConnCAN, Prince-Stewart founded FaithActs in 2014, just half a decade after graduating from college.
In her work at FaithActs, Prince-Stewart thinks constantly about how to make the path forward easier to walk for children, and particularly Black and Brown students, who are often failed by an under-funded, under-resourced American public school system. Two years ago, she was part of the push that scored an additional $150 million for public education in the state budget.
Saturday, she nodded to the significance of having a strong support system like JAC, whose members have invited students over for Thanksgiving dinner, checked in on them, raised emergency scholarship funds and become honorary aunties and cousins in the process. She also praised the gala itself, as a safe and celebratory space for people to gather, be in community, and dance the night away.
“There’s an attack on us because of our Blackness, but they cannot take away what they have not given to us,” she said during her remarks later in the evening. “Our greatest resilience in this moment won’t be the policy we pass—that’s important—it won’t be the protest in the streets—that’s important—it will be our joy.”
Top: Jameson C. Davis and Tabitha Sookdeo with media maven Babz Rawls-Ivy. Bottom: Longtime member Dr. Sherene Mason, division head of Nephrology and Medical Director of Dialysis and Pheresis at Connecticut Children's Hospital. A Jamaican immigrant, Mason put herself through medical school while raising her son, Isaac Bloodworth, into the artist and creative thinker that he is today.
Back in that audience, that commitment to joy—even and especially in a world upended by racism and xenophobia —lasted the entire night. There with African American Society (AAS) President Jameson C. Davis, Connecticut Students for a Dream Executive Director Tabitha Sookdeo stressed the importance of supporting groups like JAC as community partners, collaborators, and social connectors.
For Sookdeo, that joy is twofold. As the executive director of Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D), she’s seen firsthand how JAC shows up for the community, including as a partner on a “Know Your Rights” training C4D and AAS held primarily for African, Caribbean, and West Indian immigrants earlier this summer. She’s tabled at the group’s festivals, able to connect with immigrants rights advocates that she doesn’t always meet through her work.
But Sookdeo has also lived the reality of being a Caribbean immigrant in a new home: she grew up in Guyana and Sint Maarten until she was 16, meaning that “West Indian culture is all I know.” When she sees the way JAC wraps its arms around people across the Caribbean diaspora, she’s moved by it. “We need each other right now,” she said
“For us as an organization, it’s about understanding that we have power and we can use our resources,” added Davis. “These are our brothers and sisters.”
Top: Rebekah Moore and Brittany Daire, who met during their time at SCSU. Bottom: Speaker Duanecia Clark, executive vice president of strategy at Faith Acts for Education, introducing Jamilah Prince-Stewart. "She is raising not just her own children, but an entire generation of leaders," she said.
At a table nearby, Irie Society Founder Brittany Daire agreed that collective power and collective joy can go hand in hand. An emergency nurse raised between Connecticut and Brooklyn, Daire founded Irie in 2019, as an homage to her Jamaican roots. A year later, the organization held its first backpack giveaway in St. Elizabeth’s Parish, Jamaica.
It was amazing to give back, she said. Then Covid, paired with life, made traveling back and forth and doing outreach more difficult. But this year, “I said, I will not let another year pass” without giving back to people on the island, she remembered. With friends like Rebekah Moore, who joined her at the gala, she raised funds and collected resources to distribute back on the island.
When Daire and a team from the society went last month, Irie was able to give away not just backpacks, school supplies and food, but fund 60 physical exams (exams, which are $5,250 Jamaican Dollars, or about $33 U.S. Dollars a piece, are required for the start of school). The parish’s member of parliament, Mikael Phillips, showed up. “It was just amazing,” she said.
Christopher Benjamin, community relations officer at the Consulate General of Jamaica in New York, brought that message home. Appearing in Consul General Alison Wilson’s stead, he took the podium shortly before awardees and after dinner, asking attendees to stretch to make sure they were still awake and alert.
“Let us root ourselves to hope,” he said. “We are Jamaicans. We are builders of bridges, carriers of culture and custodians of dreams.”