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New Haven Voices Open Arts & Ideas

Lucy Gellman | June 20th, 2021

New Haven Voices Open Arts & Ideas

Downtown  |  International Festival of Arts & Ideas  |  Juneteenth  |  Music  |  COVID-19

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Kennedy of the Kennedy Administration. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

Kennedy lifted the mic and scanned the crowd. Behind her, the house band waited for a cue. In front of her, hundreds of people sat on color-coded pandemic “pods,” some at their first live event in a year. The audience on the Green started breathing together on her count. 

“Breathe it in again!” Kennedy said, and everyone on the Green seemed to loosen up all at once. She extended her arm. “Hold it. Hold it. Let it go.” 

Friday night, Kennedy was one of five musicians to lift up and celebrate New Haven voices as the International Festival of Arts & Ideas launched a week of live programming on the New Haven Green. Through June 27, programming is taking place both in-person and on a virtual stage. Almost all of it is free. 

"We wanted to make sure that it was open,” said Executive Director Shelley Quiala, who began her tenure last summer. “That it was an invitation. That it was a chance for people to come in and say, 'That's what I want the future to look like. That's what I want my tomorrow to be like. After this year of challenge, years of challenge to be honest. It's really an activation of hope plus action."AI_OpeningNight_2021 - 1

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Top: Shelley Quiala. Bottom: Salwa Abdussabur, who grew up in Beaver Hills and is now the creative director of Black Haven.

Friday, some of the city’s most beloved voices—artists Salwa Abdussabur, Ro Godwynn, Kennedy, Olive Tiger and Tranisha Blackwell—graced the stage before a set from Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra. Moments after State Sen. Martin Looney praised the festival as “really the opening of summer in Connecticut,” musician Salwa Abdussabur glided onto the stage, beaming as they greeted the crowd. Mic in hand, they began—Ooo-pen, open me up, I’m ready—and had the audience suddenly at attention.  

The work comes from their EP Breath, which they released through a virtual program at the Griot Museum of Black History in February. Beneath the lights, they teased out the lyrics, letting them unravel slowly. They looked out at the crowd to where their family sat on a pod, their dad holding their baby niece snugly in his arms.

Members of the house band joined in, lifting their bodies and jamming out with the lyrics. With the words And I’m telling you/I’m scared!, Abdussabur rocked forward shoulders first, then back on the downbeat. When the band dipped into solos, Abdussabur bent their knees and waved their hands as if they were praising the guitarist. 

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“You do not owe people your talent, you do not owe people your genius, you do not owe people your expertise. What you have is special."

It opened the night to a sort of truth-telling that New Haven artists haven’t always gotten space for on the Arts & Ideas stage. Entering with a Black Lives Matter face mask, Godwynn paused before starting their set. “Can I speak to you for like 30 seconds?” they asked. The audience clapped. A few cheers rose from the crowd. 

“If you’re here, and you’re a creative, and you’re Black, I want to let y’all know something,” they said. “You do not owe people your talent, you do not owe people your genius, you do not owe people your expertise. What you have is special. What you are is special. And I just want you all to know that.”

They segued into “Intervene,” from their recent album The Godwynn Experience Vol. II. Their vocals wound skyward, ethereal. As backup singers took over vocals that are usually looped—Godwynn is their own writer, performer, and producer—the artist sank into the piece. They rocked at the hips and shoulders, listening to the words Every night/I pray I find/What went wr-oong

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Olive Alice of Olive Tiger. The group comprises Olive, Jesse Newman and John McGrath.

Throughout the night, the performances also became an unexpected show of resilience—mics glitched, pinged shrilly with feedback, and sometimes weren’t loud enough. Artists pushed through with grace, sometimes mixing in storytelling and personal anecdotes as they set up. During Olive Tiger’s set, front person Olive Alice asked the audience to hold tight as she checked the equipment and set up instruments. Then with a single nod, musicians began to play. 

It was worth the short wait: the band performed a song from its upcoming EP, which will be released in July. After a beginning that hung feathery in the air, musicians doubled down. Alice’s vocals grew hard and sharp at the edges. On keyboard and drums respectively, Jesse Newman and John McGrath let the instrumentals bloom and burst across the stage.

They slowed it down in the second song of their set, turning the clock back to the title track of their 2016 album Until My Body Breaks. As they finished, the church bells rang out from beside the Green to signal the passage of time. 

“Such melty melty vibes,” Olive Alice said, while shouting out the other artists that performed. “It’s been good.”

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Members of the house band kept the stage hot. 

Revving up the crowd, Kennedy of the Kennedy Administration took the stage on crutches, and with an energy that buzzed from the moment she sat among the musicians. She asked attendees how they were doing and got a few quiet, subdued cheers and applause.      

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” she said. “It’s like, one of the first events since Covid”—she cleared her throat dramatically—“so I’m gonna try this again? How we doing tonight New Haven?!”

Attendees cheered back as she led them in three deep breaths. After months away from the stage, she leaned into audience banter—“Who are you texting now, miss? Shoulders, shoulders!”—and kept the crowd laughing.

Her own shoulders bouncing, she flowed from Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” to her original “Don’t Forget To Smile,” which she wrote with producer and partner Ondřej Pivec four years ago. Her voice was buttery over a Bossa nova rhythm. She joked with the audience, drawing some laughs and a few knowing nods.  

“You know pandemic, Corona, Covid, whatever you want to call it—it’s been a lot for everybody, right?” she said. “You’re taking more antidepressants. You’re trying to do crunches, but you don’t really have the stamina to do it. So this song reminds you that regardless of how you feel … you know, if those Colgate whitening strips don’t work for you, it’s alright. Still smile.”

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AI_OpeningNight_2021 - 8Top: From left to right: Tranisha Blackwell, Ro Godwynn and Salwa Abdussabur. Bottom: Detail, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. 

Other artists went right into their sets. Swaying to the house band, Blackwell slowed the evening down as the sun set over the green, belting as she sang the words The people try to te-ear you down/All the way down. She returned to the stage as her collaborators returned for an ensemble number that the group wrote together in the months before the festival. 

Her lyrics—Lookin’ ahead I see hope in the sky/Give me access and I won’t be denied—rippled across the stage and across the Green. They left the stage ready for Jazz at Lincoln Center, which brought a fiery set that lasted into the night. 

To find out more about the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, visit their website. Virtual Ideas programming has been running since May. Catch all of that here