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West Hills Kicks Off Summer In Song, Style

Lucy Gellman | May 28th, 2024

West Hills Kicks Off Summer In Song, Style

Culture & Community  |  International Festival of Arts & Ideas  |  Arts & Culture  |  Arts & Anti-racism  |  West Rock  |  West Hills

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Erica Wilkins (at top) takes it to church. Lucy Gellman.

Onstage, Erica Wilkins was taking it to church. She stepped up to the mic, four singers swaying behind her. Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance! she sang, and the lyrics rose skyward. In the grass, Shelley Goode wheeled her bike over past the speakers, and let the sound soak into her skin. Vendors, packing up their tents, paused to feel the music. Everyone, it seemed, was home.

Family, friends and fellowship came to the annual West Hills/West Rock Neighborhood Festival Saturday afternoon, as music, dance, and dozens of lifelong neighborhood boosters graced the park and playground outside The Shack and former West Rock STREAM Academy. An initiative of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and a West Hills/West Rock planning committee, this year’s event focused on “Coming Back Home,” from soul-lifting, buoyant dance to music that got the whole crowd on its feet.

Over the course of the day, a few hundred people attended. This year, the festival also featured a midday neighborhood parade, which doubled as a chance to fête West Hills Alder Honda Smith on her birthday. Smith, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1997, has left a record of service in her wake that neighbors were excited to celebrate.

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Daniels-Singleton with emcee Sean Hardy. 

“These are my stomping grounds!” said Andrea Daniels-Singleton, a lifelong West Hills resident and head of A2A Productions, who helped plan the festival. “What I hoped for was people coming together, celebrating one another. It’s really becoming the community that I remember.”

“Really, Ms. Andrea is the visionary,” added Sha McAllister, associate director of education and community impact at the Festival of Arts & Ideas. “She really wanted to create a cookout feel, and show that there’s a culture here. There’s a neighborhood here. It’s a blessing to be part of it … to see people come out and show where they from.”

Throughout the park, that sense of celebration was palpable, flitting through the warm afternoon as attendees gathered across the grass and made their way to a vendor stations and tents for New Haven social service agencies. Close to the stage, dozens danced, some only with their hips, shoulders, and vigorously bobbing heads, and others hand-in-hand with children and family members in the grass. 

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Top: Eboni Dinkins. Bottom: Alexis Smith, executive director of New Haven Legal Assistance, which has had a presence at all of Arts & Ideas' neighborhood festivals.

Ringing the park, booths that ranged from hand massages and handmade jewelry to citywide social service organizations beckoned. At one, Holistic Remedies’ Eboni Dinkins offered five dollar hand massages, each delivered with a side of conversation. At another, city staffers collected feedback on New Haven’s 2034 visioning process, the next meeting for which is coming up on June 4. 

For Jesse Austin, who performs as “God’s Poet,” it was exactly what he hoped for when he moved to West Hills. Born and raised in Bridgeport’s Father Panik Village, Austin came to New Haven several months ago through the VA Hospital in West Haven. After a wet winter and spring, the festival was a chance to be in community with several of his neighbors. He called Saturday, during which he performed poetry, a way to give back to the community.

“I love the camaraderie“ he said as the Golden Stars proclaimed “there’s a blessing in this house!“ onstage, and a cheer went up from attendees sitting nearby. “There’s music, food, T-shirt design — all the different arts make for one great chowder."

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Top: Jesse Austib. Bottom: Shahell Jefferson and Nylah. 

As she played with her niece Nylah on a sun-soaked patch of grass nearby, vocalist Shahell Jefferson agreed. While Jefferson technically grew up in Beaver Hills, her cousins and grandmother lived on South Genese and Valley Streets in West Hills. “So even though I didn’t grow up here, I grew up here,” she said. To her, Saturday felt like a family reunion.

“It’s wonderful! I love to see the neighborhood come together in peace,” she said. “It’s a good time.”

By mid-afternoon, it felt like a full-blown party. In front of the stage, dancers Kani Kee and Alec Tarver danced right into the festivities, arms and legs slicing through the summery air. Moving in time with one another, they sprang over the grass, landing in a crouch that soon took them airborne again. When Master KG’s “Jerusalema” came on after their set, the people that got up to dance felt like a natural encore. 

Taking a moment to catch his breath after performing, Kee said he was excited to show up for West Hills, where dozens of young Black creatives might not often see a dancer who looks like them. Over a decade ago, it was dancing that helped him break out of his shell and learn how to communicate without any words at all. Now, he tries to pay that forward whenever he can. 

“It’s [dancing] really unlike any other feeling I can explain,” he said. “I always make an appearance for the community.”

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Top: Alec Tarver and Kani Kee. Bottom: Casey Jones of Kittys Missey. 

At a tent nearby for her business Kittys Missey, Casey Jones said she was glad to join the event—her first Arts & Ideas neighborhood festival, but likely not her last. Over a decade ago, she started the business as a way to spread autism awareness in the Black community after her son, CaDian, was diagnosed. 

At first, Kittys Missey was small, with just a few items and a bright puzzle piece logo. Slowly, it grew into t-shirts, baby outfits and drinking glasses emblazoned with slogans. For her, it’s an accessible on ramp for talking with people about autism. Particularly in the Black community, she’s found that there’s a lot of stigma and silence around the diagnosis.

“That’s why I use my voice,” she said. “I love it. My favorite part is teaching people about autism.”

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Up a gentle, grass-lined walkway that led to The Shack, a series of new murals from the artist Edmund “B’Wak” Comfort beckoned, as the artist himself made his way gingerly across the grass. He stopped for a moment to take in musician Sean Gardner, and burst into a smile that glowed in the afternoon sun.

Back onstage, Wilkins was helping bring the afternoon to a close with a soul-stirring cover of “I Hope You Dance.” While Lee Ann Womack made the song famous in 2000, it was Gladys Knight’s 2013 version of the song that put it on Wilkins’ radar. When she sings it, she said, she feels like it’s a form of worship.

Performing it Saturday felt like a full-circle moment, she added. She has known and loved West Hills Alder Honda Smith since she was born. While she was growing up in the neighborhood, Wilkins’ dad founded a church in the Valley Street police substation. She worked her first job as a camp counselor at what is now The Shack. The neighborhood is part of who she is.

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Bottom: Shelley Goode. "This is amazing," she said of the festival.

That was also true for Daniels-Singleton, who introduced Jozanna with a memory of her time in the once-hot New Haven music group, Revelations. When she was just a young person making music, Daniels-Singleton said, Jozanna was one of the rockstars she looked up to. So when she reached out asking the artist to perform, she was thrilled when she got a response. 

“Praise the Lord, New Haven!” Jozanna said as she took the stage, and attendees cheered as they prepared to dance. Riding her bike onto the lawn, new West Hills resident Shelley Goode eased right into the music. After moving to the neighborhood from Fair Haven, she made the festival an all-day affair. 

“Oh my God, this is amazing,” she said, with high praise for the double dutch that had rocked the parade earlier in the day. When she saw the parade, “I said, this is in my neighborhood! It’s so good to see the community getting involved. Being in this community is just wonderful.”