Brian Slattery Photos
Junte Loiceño.
Thousands gathered on the New Haven Green Saturday afternoon and evening for the fourth annual Puerto Rican Festival of New Haven. Organized by Puerto Ricans United, the festival featured a string of blazing musical acts, food trucks, and vendors, plus an almost impossibly perfect summer day, that brought crowds early and kept them long into the day for a celebration of Puerto Rican pride and community.
Members of the Puerto Rican community arrived early and en masse from all around the state — from New Haven and its immediately surrounding towns to Hartford, Bridgeport, and Waterbury. The pride in being Puerto Rican began immediately, with the singing of the Puerto Rican anthem “La Borinqueña” and the raising of the flag alongside the anthem and flag of the United States.
The first group to hit the stage, Junte Loiceño, brought high-energy bomba from Loiza, the honorary Puerto Rican city recognized for this year’s festival. According to its mission statement, “Junte Loiceño was founded to keep the cultural music of Loíza alive and united. Our group goals are to educate, entertain and represent our native traditions in Puerto Rico and Internationally.” On the New Haven Green’s stage, the group succeeded all around. The drummers’ tight, propulsive rhythms and the dancers’ swirling steps were more than enough to get people moving in the crowd, dancing where they stood and clapping along. This multigenerational group was steeped in Puerto Rican tradition, but the music was of the moment, and pointed the way into the future.
As the area directly in front of the stage filled in, newcomers availed themselves of the shade from the Green’s trees.
But as even those spaces, filled, others made their own shade.
Long lines soon formed for the food vendors selling a range of Puerto Rican specialties, as well as Latin and American fare.
More vendors, selling hats, flags, and other items, also got visitors.
The Regional Water Authority’s moveable drinking fountains saw a steady stream of users.
The second group, Carlos el Lunatico y su Grupo Típico, stirred up the crowd even more. Backed by a band playing smooth yet deep grooves that caused a few people in the audience to get up and grab a partner to dance, Carlos el Lunatico interspersed his powerful verses with calls across the Green to celebrate what everyone had come for.
“¡El orgullo puertorriqueño!” he cried into the microphone. (“Puerto Rican pride!”)
The crowd responded each time with a shout back, and a burst of flag-waving that for a moment turned the Green red, white, and blue.
Among those in the audience were Joe Martinez and his wife Melody. “I’m trying to learn more of my culture,” he said, humbly — though he knew and lived much of it already. His mother and father are from Puerto Rico, and he is one of 15 children — seven girls, eight boys. “A lot of my brothers are very talented with the bongos and the congas and the timbao. So hearing my brothers playing, I grew up with that, and I ended up playing the bongos.”
There was always music around the house growing up, and he recalled with fondness the Puerto Rican tradition of the parranda — akin to caroling around Christmastime, except in this case it means a band of musicians traveling from house to house all night, growing in number until it becomes a roving party filled with food, drink, and music. “Everyone goes to each house, everybody has something to eat. They go to each house. The grab a coffee, bongos, maracas, and go to the next house. At the end of it, you have so many people playing, it’s amazing,” Martinez said.
“It’s one of the most amazing cultures in the world, and I’m trying my best,” he added. “The more I learn, the greater it is. It’s just what I do.”
Hours before the start of the fest, the police announced the arrest of a 53-year-old man from Orange who had posted a threatening comment about the festival on WTNH’s Facebook page.
