Tag Archives: Mandingo Ambassadors

Adieu Ideas

The Mandingo Ambassadors have a lot going on. Maybe it was because I’d just happily wandered the punk gauntlet at the Ideat Village festival in Pitikin and Millennium plazas before the Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band began playing on the Green. While much of the crowd was dancing and grooving, I was detecting a gorgeous guitar-buzz Velvet Underground vibe under all those frenetic beats and tropical flourishes.

Something for everyone, then, at the culminating free public concert of the 2011 International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The weather was nicer than it had been for most of the festival (which Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble had opened in a rainstorm).

The last couple of A&I fest-closing acts had been the kid-coddling bands They Might Be Giants and Dan Zanes & Friends. Mandingo Ambassadors and headliners Freshly Ground maintained that family-friendly vibe without emphasizing any single generation.

And it was one wide community that came out to bid A&I 2011 goodbye. Mayor DeStefano kept his introductory remarks brief, thanking a host of city departments who’d served the festival, then announcing “Politician is done for now. See you later.”

Maybe that one was, but I ran into politicians from my neighborhood, as well as festival speakers, old friends, activists, casual acquaintances—the full range of New Haven. Friends visited from rural Roxbury. We hit FroYo for dessert. We flitted down the sidewalks without stepping on a single crack.