Culture & Community | Music | Arts & Culture | Newhallville
Laila Hugley, a fourth grader at Worthington Hooker who has loved music since she was a baby. Lucy Gellman Photos.
In the darkness that blanketed Newhall Street, Laila Hugley pointed out the Christmas trees glowing down the block. One was dressed in tinsel and multicolored lights. Another gleamed from a window in white and gold, with a star at the top. Beside her, Babz Rawls-Ivy lifted a lantern, and started a countdown to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
Eight carolers filled Ivy, Newhall and Hazel Streets with song Tuesday night, as temperatures plunged into the high 20s and stars filled the low-hanging sky. Gathered by Rawls-Ivy, editor of the Inner-City News and the host of WNHH’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk,” their charge was simple: bring Christmas cheer to Newhallville, a neighborhood often dismissed as violent and unsafe. In a season all about miracles, bring light to the darkness.
The caroling runs Monday through Wednesday night at 75 Ivy St. Rawls-Ivy said she was inspired to do something in her neighborhood after thinking about a fatal shooting that took place on Shepherd Street earlier this month. Caroling outdoors, where the risk of spreading Covid is low and spreading joy is high, seemed like a no-brainer.
Carolers from left to right: Babz Rawls-Ivy, Simon Doss-Goll, Cheryl Doss, Laila Hugley, Jonathan Berryman, Angelina Wilson, Allyson Regis, and Sophia Kaplan.
“I’m not preaching, I just want to fight back with art as social action, and this is the season,” Rawls-Ivy said as the group walked from Ivy to Newhall Street, and then from Newhall on to Hazel. “It’s just my way of doing what I could do. I have no ulterior motive. I’m not suggesting that people embrace Christmas. This just makes me feel better.”
If Tuesday was any indication, fellow carolers felt it too. As they huddled on the porch, attendees included a music teacher, college professor, new neighbor, young musicians and two former members of Church of the Redeemer, where Rawls-Ivy worshiped for 20 years. As they assembled on her porch, they introduced themselves to each other, paging through a packet of Christmas carols that Rawls-Ivy had assembled over the weekend. Titles from “Jingle Bell Rock” to “Silent Night” peeked out among the pages.
“I tried to curate a mix of holy sacred songs that we know, and then a couple songs that had nothing to do with Jesus,” she said. She’s open to additions, she added—Laila hopes to see “Jingle Bells” next year (this year, the song didn’t make the list after Rawls-Ivy discovered that it was for years performed in blackface). Other contenders for 2023 include “Mary Did You Know,” which has become a staple of the season since Mark Lowry first penned it in 1984.
As the clock ticked toward a 6:15 start, carolers mulled over versions of the Christmas story, debating how well Mary’s family would have actually taken the news of a surprise pregnancy. Jonathan Berryman, an administrator at Hill Regional Career High School who for years taught music in New Haven’s elementary schools, joked that Mary knew exactly what she was doing when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was miraculously pregnant at the same time.
Just as Cheryl Doss, a professor of international development at Oxford, started to push back, the clock struck 6:15. A car door shut across the street, and Angelina Wilson and Laila scurried toward the porch. Rawls-Ivy squealed at the last-minute addition. It was officially time to sing.
As Rawls-Ivy lifted an electric lantern to the page, the first notes of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” floated from the porch over the street, the notes bouncing in the brisk air. The sound ran along the rafters, wicker furniture, and doorways, making its way down the steps and onto the sidewalk. As they sang, hats and mittens bobbing, carolers smiled and began to rock in place.
Rawls-Ivy.
“All right, let’s walk the streets of Newhallville bringing good cheer!” Rawls-Ivy urged with a smile. As the group walked, she searched for homes festooned with holiday decorations, drifting toward them as the light beckoned from front yards and living room windows. At the corner of Ivy and Newhall Streets, she found a spot between two houses, trees twinkling from the windows.
Pages flipped; carolers dipped into “Joy To The World” and began to sing. Berryman’s voice anchored the group, knitting voices together as it wove through octaves.
As the group drifted down the block, it became a way to see the neighborhood with new eyes—and ears. Lights danced and glittered in a Newhall Street front yard, and the group flowed from “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bell Rock” to “O’ Come All Ye Faithful.” On Hazel Street, Rawls-Ivy said she was excited for “Hark! The Herald Angels” because she loves listening to characters sing it on A Charlie Brown Christmas.
In the bone-cracking cold, it was quiet for just a moment before they sang. “I believe in us!” Rawls-Ivy cried to the seven carolers gathered around her. “I believe!” Then they sang over the lullaby that is New Haven: cars revving in the distance, buses trundling by on Shelton Avenue, an occasional shout from a neighbor.
It became a new holiday tradition for Wilson and her daughter Laila, a fourth grader at Worthington Hooker School who Rawls-Ivy has named the 2022-2023 chair of the porch caroling committee. Even as a baby, Wilson said, Laila was incredibly musical; a “Mommy and Me” class at Neighborhood Music School bloomed into violin and then viola lessons, which she now plays at Music Haven.
Three years ago this month, she and her mom met Rawls-Ivy at Long Wharf Theatre, during the run of Kate Hamill’s Pride & Prejudice. The three have remained close ever since. After caroling on Ivy Street Monday, Laila came back Tuesday for more. Bundled in layers (“I don’t even feel it!” she said of the cold), she often sang with her head resting on her mom’s shoulder. On Hazel Street, she threaded her arm tenderly through Wilson’s, and it stayed there for minutes.
“What I like about Christmas is it brings people together, and even if you haven't seen family in years, if they come down for Christmas, it's just so much fun,” Laila said. “Sitting by the Christmas tree, opening up presents, laughing. Thanking people for getting you the presents.”
While she has family rituals that she delights in—matching jammies, hot cocoa with cousins, and snowball fights are just a few she holds dear—caroling has created a new one. "I'm looking forward to so many things about Christmas!,” she said.
For Rawls-Ivy, it's also a chance to remind neighbors that there is always someone—or multiple someones—looking out for them. In the years since she has made a home on Ivy Street, her porch has become a social space, birthday and wedding venue, late-night meeting point, and impromptu, eighteenth-century-level salon in the middle of Newhallville. She doesn’t hold court: she builds community.
“The blessing is that we come together and that we're walking these streets that people claim are dangerous,” she said. “And we're singing!"
Occasionally, the street stirred to life with the sound. On Hazel Street, a teenager propped open a third-floor window and stuck his head out, his phone in his hand as he took a quick photo and waved to the group. As carolers made the block back onto Ivy Street, two neighbors cracked open another third-floor window and began wishing carolers a merry Christmas.
“We love it! We love it! It's just so beautiful!” cried Stacy Downer, the warmth in her voice making it down to street level. “It reminds me of childhood and just getting together. If no one tells you, we really appreciate it. We love you!”
At the carolers' right, another Ivy Street door swung open. “Thank you! Merry Christmas!” a neighbor said before disappearing back into the warmth of his home.
"We gotta do it for the kids! We gotta make sure Santa gets here!" Rawls-Ivy responded as she guided the group back towards her porch.
Back on Rawls-Ivy’s porch, Berryman danced his way through “The 12 Days Of Christmas, the final song of the night before quiet fell again over the street. ” It conjured a moment earlier in the evening, during which he had jokingly calculated the cost of the song (“The price of lords has gone up,” Rawls-Ivy joked).
This time, it seemed, he was all in: he nailed a move for each day. He pulled his arms into his sides as wings when attendees reached the six geese-a-laying. He paddled forward on seven swans a-swimming. When he got to a partridge in a pear tree, he pulled his hands up over his head, turning them into branches.
Beside him, Laila marveled at the fact that he’d never had to look at the page.
Years of practice, he told her with a smile. If she stuck with it, she would get there too.
A final night of caroling will take place Wednesday Dec. 21 at 4:30 p.m. at 75 Ivy Street.