Festa de São João, Waterbury, 2010
PhotographerPhotographed by
Jose Conceicao
(Cape Verdean)
Date2010
Mediumborn digital images
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.359.1-.7
DescriptionPhotographs of the Festa de São João held in Waterbury in 2010.
2015.196.359.1: Image showing Jose Conceicao and his shirt commemmorating the Cape Verdean Social Club.
2015.196.359.2: Image showing a cooking pot filled with catchupa, a traditional stew of hominy, beans, and meat.
2015.196.359.3: Image showing traditional mortar and pestles for grinding corn.
2015.196.359.4-.7: Images showing repicar de tambor.
NotesSubject Note: Connecticut has the third largest Cape Verdean population in the United States (after Rhode Island and Massachusetts), with active and growing communities in Bridgeport, Waterbury, and Norwich. Starting in 1996, the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program of the Institute for Community Research (and now at the Connecticut Historical Society) participated in a statewide public history project with one of the state's most interesting but little-known ethnic groups. The Cape Verdean presence in New England dates to the 18th century, and new immigrants from Cape Verde continue to arrive. However, libraries, even in cities with a sizeable Cape Verdean presence, hold little information about the history and culture of this group generally, and virtually nothing about Connecticut's estimated 5,000 Cape Verdeans. Yet the cultural traditions of Cape Verdean-Americans remain strong, deeply felt, and regularly practiced. From their early presence as whalers on New England schooners to the burgeoning popularity of their distinctive music both globally and locally, Cape Verdeans have contributed much to the character, the labor force, and the culture of southern New England.2015.196.359.1: Image showing Jose Conceicao and his shirt commemmorating the Cape Verdean Social Club.
2015.196.359.2: Image showing a cooking pot filled with catchupa, a traditional stew of hominy, beans, and meat.
2015.196.359.3: Image showing traditional mortar and pestles for grinding corn.
2015.196.359.4-.7: Images showing repicar de tambor.
In 1996, CCHAP began a three-year project to document Cape Verdean musicians and tradition bearers across the state, especially in Waterbury, Bridgeport/Stratford, and Norwich. Together with community scholar Antonia Sequeira, CCHAP conducted analog tape interviews; videotaped performances; photographed festivals and community activities; and collected copies of rare books of songs, CDs and tapes, historical photographs, and research materials. In several cases the documentation preserves records or images of people and places that no longer exist. This work resulted in a publication called "Connecticut Cape Verdeans: A Community History" that was distributed to every public library in the state and given to as many Cape Verdeans as possible in the region. On July 17, 1999, the Waterbury Cape Verdean Social Club hosted a concert featuring musicians interviewed during the project, and a panel discussion was held at the Bridgeport Public Library. The materials collected by Antonia and the project team became a valuable archive of Cape Verdean life in Connecticut - information that had never been collected and made available to the public before.
CCHAP continues to expand the collection through ongoing work with this community, most recently assisting and documenting the historic preservation of St. Anthony’s Chapel and local stonemasons in Norwich. Cape Verdean musicians involved in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program have also been recorded for the archive. These and other materials comprise a unique collection within the CCHAP archive. Very little available information exists in print on Connecticut Cape Verdeans, while community scholars actively collect family histories and host regular music events. Original interview recordings and copies of materials gathered are now part of the CCHAP archive at the Connecticut Historical Society. Some materials were also copied and donated to the Cape Verdean Women’s Club in Bridgeport.
Building on the earlier oral history work conducted by community scholar Antonia Sequeira, CCHAP collaborated with her and a number of Cape Verdeans to develop "Cape Verdeans in Connecticut: A Community History Project." In conversations with community members of all ages CCHAP heard time and time again of the importance of music to Cape Verdeans. More than entertainment, Cape Verdean music provides both a focus of ethnic uniqueness and a historical record of events, memories, and the movement of people. Music also serves to link Cape Verdeans in diaspora with loved ones back home and across the world. Music, situated at the heart of Cape Verdean cultural expression, became the project's entry point into an examination of tradition, growth, and change in the Connecticut community. The goal of the project was to collect video- and audio-taped interviews with musicians and other tradition bearers, along with their family photographs and other memorabilia, in order to gain an insight into the patterns of social change and cultural life in this community in Connecticut. The primary resource material gathered through the project is now archived at the Connecticut Historical Society.
The inspiration for this project began when Antonia Sequeira of the Cape Verdean Women’s Social Club of Bridgeport, along with her friend and colleague, videographer Joan Neves, participated in the Inner City Cultural Development Program organized by the Institute for Community Research and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. A grant from that program enabled Joan to travel to Washington, DC in 1995 for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which that year featured Cape Verdean culture. Inspired by that experience, Joan and Antonia began to plan for a long-term project to document local Cape Verdeans and the community’s history in Connecticut. They found a partner in Lynne Williamson, then Director of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, the statewide folk and traditional arts program at the Institute for Community Research. Together the team obtained grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund Community Folklife Program. For three years Antonia, Joan, and Lynne conducted taped interviews with Cape Verdean musicians and tradition bearers across the state, also documenting Cape Verdean neighborhoods, festivals, and activities.
Antonia Sequeira and Lynne Williamson served as project co-directors. The full project team included Joan Neves as videographer, Koren Paul who transcribed the interview tapes, anthropologist Laura Pires-Hester, Pelagio Silva as concert organizer and emcee, and video producer Pedro Cardoso. Jo Blatti and Susan Hurley-Glowa contributed essays to the project book. Other Cape Verdean resource people included Jorge Job, John deBrito, Raquel Figueiredo, Elaine Santos Kain, José Conceiçao, Carlos da Graça, Johnny Andrade, Romeo Moore, Mary Anne Monteiro, Maria Lalache Spencer, Luca Cardozo, Marge Santos, Duducha, Mary Santos Sullivan, Claudia Silva, Anna Stanley, Anna Soares, Gertrude Duarte, Phyllis Williams, Roberta Delgado Vincent, Freddie Gonsalves, Philip Marceline, Antonio Sr., Abel, José and Matthew Santos, as well as Joao Cerilo Monteiro, Ray Almeida, and Ron Barboza.
The project was supported by the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund Community Folklife Program through the Fund for Folk Culture; the Connecticut Humanities Council; the Institute for Community Research; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
Cape Verdean traditional culture inevitably changed with the mass migration of people from the islands to America. Transplanted practices have themselves evolved in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as the second and third generations are born and grow up in a vastly different society. Many in Cape Verdean communities in Connecticut adhere to traditions which although altered in some ways, maintain both the flavor and meaning of their origins. The constant influx of new Cape Verdeans from the islands freshens familiarity with older customs while bringing forward cultural expressions which before 1975 were forbidden under Portuguese colonial rule.
Many Connecticut Cape Verdeans and community organizations remain actively involved in sustaining heritage through regular educational and cultural activities. Wherever they settled, Cape Verdeans formed clubs and associations, a direct maintenance of the island tradition of tabanka. These mutual aid societies in Cape Verde provided essential assistance and services for local inhabitants suffering from constant drought, poverty, and colonial neglect. In America early immigrants from the town of Praia on the island of Santiago organized the Holy Name Society in Boston. Men from this group traveled all over New England, especially during the Depression, to distribute clothes, food, or services. Antonia Sequeira remembers them helping her father to dig and plant a garden behind the family's house in Stratford. In the late 1930s and 1940s, communities established Cape Verdean social clubs which still flourish, a direct continuation of the tabanka tradition. The concept of assistance for those in need continues in the regular Cape Verdean practice of sending oil drums packed with clothes and other American goods to families in the islands, especially during the frequent drought-related famines.
Separation from their homeland led many Cape Verdean immigrants to compose mornas, songs of great longing and sadness. Mornas remain beloved especially by the older generation who remember the reasons for composing them. Other traditional musical forms such as coladeira, mazurca, and samba are enjoying something of a revival among younger Cape Verdeans, while the African-influenced funana is wildly popular on the contemporary club scene. Playing instruments, singing, dancing, and drumming still happen spontaneously at festivals and social gatherings. Despite the cold of a Connecticut winter, some hardy musicians go door to door in Waterbury, Bridgeport, and Stratford, performing canta reis, the traditional New Year serenades. Cape Verdean wakes sometimes feature the choroguiza, a chant lamenting the deceased. The tradition of sending verbal messages via packet boats to families back in the island kept immigrants in touch across the ocean. The popular coladeira Rozinha is a mantenha, a message to Rozinha from her lover working abroad, asking her to wait a year until he can return to marry her. Connecticut musicians such as Jorge Job have been composers of mornas and other Cape Verdean song styles, while the Waterbury community maintain the repicar de tambor, a drumming and dance tradition practiced at the Festa de Sao Joao in June.
The project and the collected archive materials include many examples of locally composed and performed music, along with interviews with musicians and culture bearers and photographs, videos, and other recordings of them.
Subject Note for the Waterbury Cape Verdean Community: Waterbury has become a major center of Cape Verdean culture in Connecticut. Numbering around 200 families in the late 1990s, most Cape Verdeans in this area today came from the island of Sao Nicolau, with some from Fogo, Sao Vincente, and Sao Antao. Many more recent immigrants from Cape Verde have moved to Waterbury, making the cultural expressions here very traditional. Early immigrants settled here to work at the Scovill, Chase, and American Brass factories, especially after 1935, when the cranberry industry in Massachusetts diminished. New arrivals work in professional as well as blue collar trades.
Cape Verdeans settled in the Phoenix Street/Abbott Avenue area, very near the brass factories where they worked. More recently they have concentrated on Oak Street, which they joke should be named Sao Nicolau Street. Around 1935, a group of men founded the first social club on Abbott Avenue, moving to Vine Street as they grew. In 1993, officers of the Club purchased the present building at 1181 North Main Street. A full schedule of activities there includes musical Noite Caboverdiana (Cape Verdean nights) with popular bands from New England and Cape Verde; mazurca and funana dance contests; biska card game tournaments; and celebrations of saints' feast days with processions, repicar di tambor (intense drumming and movement) and Cape Verdean foods. These events often serve as fundraisers for families in need. Recently the Cape Verdean ambassador to the United States spent a full day at the club, taking part in a community discussion attended by representatives from Cape Verdean organizations in Bridgeport and Norwich as well.
Waterbury musicians, such as singer Johnny Spinola and bassist Tony Santos traveled and performed with Joe Silva's band throughout New England in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. When he arrived from Sao Antao in the late 1960s, keyboard player Armando Gomes formed a Cape Verdean band called Ultramarine, the name given by the Portuguese to all their colonies. After independence and an influx of new members from the islands the band became Cape Verde '75.
One of Connecticut's most accomplished Cape Verdean musicians, Jorge Job is a Cape Verdean guitar and cavaquinho player as well as a composer in Krioulu, the local language of Cape Verde. Jorge and his son Rui, a professional keyboard player and record producer, have arranged many of Jorge's compositions for their CD "Geracao," published in 2006. Bassist Djim Job (Jorginho), a professional bass player, has collaborated with his father on several musical ventures including composing mornas under the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2005-2006. Jorge has continued to play music at the Cape Verdean Social Club well into his 90s.
As in Bridgeport, young Waterbury Cape Verdeans participated in a dance group. In the late 1990s/early 2000s the group Warm Heart performed mazurca, funana, and tchabeta (a very fast rhythm-driven women's dance, part of a batuko performance) under the direction of Raquel Figueiredo. In addition to local performances, the group traveled to Providence, Rhode Island for the annual Cape Verdean Independence Day celebration on July 5. They worked with Rhode Island traditional musician Joao Cerilo Monteiro as part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program from 1999-2001.
Subject Note: Festa de São João, one of the most interesting and traditional cultural events in Connecticut takes place annually in Waterbury. The Festa de São João is celebrated on June 24 in most of the islands, honoring the feast day of Saint John and the summer solstice. Led by Dario Lopes, a group of Cape Verdeans committed to traditional culture organized the first Waterbury presentation of the Festa in 1995. Participants traveled from New Jersey, New Bedford, and Providence to attend this unique event.
On the Saturday closest to June 24, the men taking part in the parade gather at the Social Club. They collect the necessary equipment and transport everything and everyone to the fields below Wilby High School in the hills of north Waterbury. In the late afternoon people gather down the hill near the soccer pitch while the procession forms up at the school. Jorge Job and his wife Tina set up the food tent, grilling chicken and cooking Cape Verdean corn stews midgo e'ngrao and kachupa. Various Cape Verdean teams from around New England play soccer while others stage traditional games such as the sack race, argolinhas, and ovos. Eventually the sound of drums announces the parade as it winds down the quarter-mile hill through the fields. They come into view, five men beating a variety of frame drums in different sizes and tempos, in a call-and-response rhythm. In the center of the group "sails" the model ship, the Pelamba, accompanied by a "captain" and a "pilot" dressed in full regalia and blowing whistles.
After circling the soccer pitch and being joined by the players, the parade arrives back at the food tent. There everyone congregates, and for the next two hours or so the drummers play furiously, taking only short breaks. Other musicians sometimes join in with guitars. Towards the end, as dusk begins, young girls and then others spontaneously begin dancing in pairs. This is the Kola Sao Joao, a dance of couples who, with arms held high as in Portuguese folk dance, move together rhythmically to bump navels. In the early evening the procession moves back up the hill and the crowd disperses, to return to the club later for late night music.
A uniquely Cape Verdean experience, the Festa de São João combines Catholic and secular, Portuguese and African, colonial society and rural fertility influences while remembering and incorporating historical symbols from colonialism and the maritime trades. While the procession has not taken place after around 2001, the repicar de tambor, kola dancing, and traditional card games and foods are part of the Festa celebration every year at the Cape Verdean Club of Waterbury.
Additional audio, video, and photographic materials exist in the archive relating to these artists.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
2009 June
