Thomas Breen photo
Green proprietor Kica Matos (center) with Bregamos Healing Drummers Michael Mills and Rafael Ramos.
Dozens of city residents gathered on the New Haven Green to witness a spectacle that, if only for an hour, seemed to transform the historic park at the middle of Downtown.
But unlike the 100-plus synthetic-marijuana-related poisonings that drew local, state, and national attention to a public health crisis at the city center last month, Friday afternoon’s eye-catching activity at the corner of Church Street and Chapel Street was filled with dancing, music, and joy.
This time, the Green was under the spell not of FUBINACA-laced K2, but of the African and Latin rhythms of the Bregamos Healing Drummers.
“The sense of the strong community desire to take back the Green is really very prominent,” said Janet Bond Arterton, a federal judge who chairs the obscure, private self-perpetuating organization known as the Proprietors of the Green, which organized Friday’s concert in collaboration with the city. The Proprietors have legally owned the Green for the past 200 years. (They contract with the city parks department to maintain it.)
“And so the culture on the Green,” Arterton continued, “is an immediate and appropriate antidote to all of the terrible negativity. And this concert starts it.”
The Bregamos Healing Drummers on Friday afternoon.
From noon to 1 on Friday afternoon, a half-dozen percussionists, led by the Fair Haven-based outfit’s founder, Rafael Ramos (who in his day job serves as the deputy director of the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative), beat on an assortment of congas, djembas, djun djuns, and other African hand drums as lunchtime passerby stopped to watch and listen and join in on the fun.
This concert at the southeastern corner of the Green did not turn a section of Downtown into a samba, bomba, and plena dance party simply for the sake of ushering in the weekend with good music.
This concert had a deeper purpose: to respond to last month’s wave of overdoses with a pop-up cultural event that would attract city residents to the Green not for the sake of buying and consuming drugs, but for the sake of enjoying art and each other’s company.
It also signaled a coming-out of sorts for the Proprietors and their plans for the future of the Green, a subject of intense public debate since the August overdoses.
Matos and Green proprietor chair Janet Bond Arterton.
“Following the dreadful events of the overdoses,” Arterton said, “the urgency to make the activities on the Green positive and enjoyable and inviting is very strong.”
She and fellow proprietor (and Fair Haven social justice advocate) Kica Matos said that the Bregamos Healing Drummers’ concert was only the first of many upcoming performances that the Green’s owners have lined up for the weeks and months ahead.
Matos said that the Puerto Rican Bomba drum and dance group Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental will be playing on the Green as part of the properietors-curated series on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 2 p.m. Then on Oct. 6., the Elite Drill Squad Drum Corp. will come to the city center for a concert, followed on Nov. 2 by a Day of the Dead parade and, later that month, a flash mob led by the Elm City Dance Collective (ECDC).
“Our idea is to populate the Green with talented local artists,” she said, “and to reclaim the Green as a safe space for everybody to enjoy.”
“I want to see the Green as a place where everybody feels welcome,” she continued. “Where everybody feels safe.”
Arterton jumped in with one group that she wants to exclude from feeling welcome on the Green: “Everyone except drug dealers.”
Just after noon, Ramos and five of his drumming colleagues sat down on benches at the corner of Chapel and Church, pulled out their leather-topped hand drums, and started playing. Almost immediately, a crowd circled around the group, dancing in step with the interweaving rhythms, joining in as drummer Michael Mills passed around smaller percussive instruments the group had brought with them.
Over the course of the hour, over 100 people came by the event, and the crowd at any given time was never less than 30 to 40.
“Music is the soul,” said 35-year-old New Havener Bevin Young as he stopped to listen while walking through the Green. “It makes me feel good after all the bad things that have been happening on the Green recently. I just feel so happy and joyful.”
Gateway Community College students Zulmarie Vera, Julion Solivan, Jean Torres, and Prisila Osorio.
A quartet of Gateway Community College students walking through the park also stopped to take a listen.
“We need more stuff like this,” said Jean Torres.
“This is downtown,” said Zulmarie Vera. “This works.”
Dressed head to toe in Boston Red Sox gear, Larry Smith nodded and danced with approval.
“I like the congas,” he said. “They’re part of our culture.” He said that he would like to see more family-friendly activities on the Green. He also said that he approves of the eight to 10 police officers he often sees on the Green, as he thinks they deter illegal behavior.
New Haven Peace Council member Jim Pandaru.
As the concert progressed, and shakers and cowbells and small handdrums made their back and forth through the crowd, the drummers transitioned to a final Rumba Colombiana rhythm, a uniform beat of staccato quarter notes bounding from their instruments.
“We are excited to partner with the Proprietors on these cultural activations of the Green,” city Parks Director Becky Bombero told the Independent after the concert. “These events will help connect residents with the space in a positive manner and discourage negative use. Today’s opening event, the Bregamos Healing Drummers, was a great way to kick off the series with a truly vibrant, exciting and engaging performance.”
Ramos.
In Spain, Ramos said after the concert, bregamos comes from the verb meaning “to work very hard every day.”
“In Latin America,” he said, “it means to make a deal, to make it happen by any means necessary.”
He said that the group is honored to be the first performers to participate in the proprietors’ new pop-up concert series on the Green. He promised that the group, if asked, would happily come back to do more shows.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch part of the concert.
Turn the spectators into drummers. That is an easy community engagement