Rondo Days festival celebrates legacy of historic Black neighborhood

NINA MOINI: Well, this Saturday, thousands will gather for Rondo Days, a celebration of the historic Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul. Rondo Days was started in 1983 after the vibrant, predominantly Black neighborhood was ripped apart by the state's choice to choose that area to begin construction of I-94 in the 1960s.

Despite the destruction and displacement of families that followed, the community has been coming together for decades now for Rondo Days. This year, it's taking place at the Martin Luther King Center in St. Paul. Joining me now are two people helping make Rondo Days possible. Gayle Smaller is the board chair with Rondo Avenue Inc and he joins us on the phone. Thanks for being here, Gayle.

GAYLE SMALLER: Yeah. No problem. Thanks for having us.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. And very excited to have in the studio today Rondo Days board member Marina Neal. Marina, thanks for being here as well.

MARINA NEAL: Thank you for having us.

NINA MOINI: Well, I hope it's going to be a wonderful weather weekend for all of you. Gayle, so your father, Floyd Smaller Jr, was one of the founders of Rondo Days. Tell us a little bit about the festival's history.

GAYLE SMALLER: Yes. So it all kind of came about, my dad, he left to go back to Arkansas to finish up his college as a collegiate athlete. And when he returned after graduating from college, he noticed that the neighborhood had been completely dispersed.

So him, along with one of his childhood friends, Mr. Roger Anderson, were looking for ways to bring the community back together and keep the spirit of Rondo alive. It had a lot of value to them and how it raised them, and all of the people that community had raised and contributed to their development.

And so what they decided is that Rondo Days would be an opportunity for them to call back all of the families that had been displaced, to come back one day of the summer to enjoy each other and look at it pretty much like a big family reunion from the displaced Rondo families.

NINA MOINI: And so I imagine, Gayle, that you've been going since you were a kid. How has it changed over the years? How fun to watch?

GAYLE SMALLER: Yeah. No, it's continually developing. Consistency is everything with festivals like this. And so by it being around since 1983 and being able to build that consistency, we have a ton of people that kind of base their annual calendar around Rondo Days. So we get a lot of old residents that come in from out of town. And it's really over the years, different people have led it. But really over the last maybe seven years, we've really been trying to get it back rooted to the principles of remembering Rondo and making sure that it's about the community and putting the community first.

NINA MOINI: And Marina, did you grow up in Rondo? Or, what does this mean to you? How did you end up on the board?

MARINA NEAL: I'm a transplant baby. I'm actually born in Canada, raised in Trinidad, and I married a Rondo family member, so they are definitely a family member. I call myself transplant baby like several other. And then my kids are Rondo legacy family members. So the family house is actually right in front of where the Commemorative Plaza is right now off of Rondo and Fisk. So deep roots.

The first festival I saw here when I came to the Twin Cities was this Black festival, I had no clue, was super excited because I'm like, there's people that look like me. And so it's been an honor to raise my children and grow and thrive in this community. We are all so proud of Rondo. I support Rondo all day long, every day, by going to the businesses in this community.

And then I had the honor of hosting in 2019 when I was still at KMOJ. And Gayle was like, I'm going to need your help. And then COVID hit and I was like, I didn't think twice about it. And then 2023, he was like, no, I'm going to need your help. He's like, do you want to be involved in this capacity or this capacity? And I was like--

NINA MOINI: He was like, we're going to need you on the board.

MARINA NEAL: Yeah. And I'm event manager for a living, so I was like, I want to be behind the scenes.

NINA MOINI: Oh, Gayle, you got a good one, an event manager for the board.

GAYLE SMALLER: Oh, yeah. No, definitely.

NINA MOINI: So you must be very busy right now. Gayle, is there anything new or different this year? I know the musical acts are a really big deal. What could people expect this year?

GAYLE SMALLER: Well, that was kind of our focus is coming off of COVID, trying to really ease back into the festival and not overwhelm the new board members. And so we've just been developing it in phases. And one of the things that we really wanted to bring to the neighborhood was national acts that people were big fans of that would draw the right type of crowd.

And so this year, we're really excited. I won't spoil the beans. I'll let Marina because of our hard work, let you guys who's coming. But yeah, we have a really exciting lineup. We really focus a lot of our energy on shining the light on local Rondo artists as well. So we really pack the show with really talented local Rondo born and raised artists, and then bring in the national headliners to cap off the evening.

NINA MOINI: Marina, do you want to share the kind of national act and maybe shout out a couple of local ones?

MARINA NEAL: Of course. Yeah, this Saturday, oh my gosh, 12 to 7. Oh, it's right around the corner. So first of all, big up the sponsors. We want to big up Visit St. Paul, big up people in the press and the media. Al MacFarlane, special shout out. And then all of our volunteers behind the scenes, our tech people, our third parties. And then our team, our Rondo team. There's five of us and we're very small, but smalls ain't so smaller is my new hashtag for this year. And thus scale smaller.

So yeah, we have local acts. I think I also want to call out one thing about Rondo is 99% of our food vendors are people of color. And so what we also like to do is re-inject wealth back into our community. And just make sure people are thriving. So we have for our food vendors, there's very many of them. We've been working hard to make sure it's going to be amazing. They are all people, 99% I think, yeah, 99.9% are people of color or have people of color working on their force.

We have 30 table vendors. We have an exciting, for the second year, an exciting kids zone that Miss Mercedes is going to be hosting. That's going to be on the other side on the Rondo education side. I'm not going to give away all of her amazing activities, but she has made it. She's got her own tents of vendors there as well that are focused on kids. That will make sure and do 12 to 4 wonderful activities.

A lot of County activations will be happening. The Minnesota Ramsey County Board is here-- Minnesota Ramsey County team is here, and they're bringing their mental health bus. So that's also important too. And then our vendors just got so much going on. We have the senior brunch that's at capacity from 11 to 1. That's a big part of Rondo as well. Miss Juneteenth Queens will be in the building. Our St. Paul superintendent will be in the building.

Wonderful local acts and DJs, DJ Dime, DJ Diggy. And so our Black firefighters will be there. We want to big up Hallie Q. Mr. Benjamin Roberts over there for being a great partner. St. Paul Public Schools for being a great partner.

NINA MOINI: You're giving me an idea of just how many people it takes to bring something like this together. I'm so excited for you all. And the day after tomorrow already. But I did want to take a moment Marina and Gayle, just to say that an elder who is typically there will not be there this year. Melvin Giles, who was known as the bubble man and was a peacemaker in the community, a leader, an elder. First of all, I'm very sorry for your loss, Marina. I just wanted to give you a chance to share anything you wanted to Share.

MARINA NEAL: Gayle, do you want to say something?

NINA MOINI: And of course you too. You both can. But you could start if you want.

MARINA NEAL: Thank you. So I know Mr. Giles. Actually, he was a big part of an event that I helped organize last year for Nanny's Jamaican Kitchen, where it was a celebration of two years in the North end for businesses. I've known him-- I've worked in the Rondo community at Golden Time coffee shop. It was my second job when I moved here to the US, so I used to see him all the time coming in at the coffee shop, just bubbling. I was new, this is when I had freshly gotten married. I had no clue about all the amazing things that happened in Rondo.

But I want to say he is now was. He is a vital part because he still will live on with us. Of things that happened when it came to gardening and just different type of activations in the Rondo community that just brought it together in a different way. Some of the gardens, he was there--

NINA MOINI: -- and the bubbles. He was known for blowing the bubbles.

MARINA NEAL: And they did a little tribute and a walk the other day in honor of him. And they were blowing bubbles. And so I saw that on Facebook. I couldn't join, I'm sorry, but it's a huge loss. But also, we have so many gains. Like, we have to remember all the gains that he has left for us to continue to learn.

NINA MOINI: And Gayle, I'd love to just give you the last word, anything that you wanted to say about Mr. Giles or just anything else you want the community to know before we've got to go.

GAYLE SMALLER: Yeah, . So first, our headliners for this year since Marina was going to pass it back to me, are--

NINA MOINI: She was keeping it in her pocket.

MARINA NEAL: All right, I didn't know. I thought he said away.

GAYLE SMALLER: A legendary group that I was raised on and they wanted to be on this stage. So we were able to secure them. And that's Brand Nubians out of New York City. And then we also have Monie Love, who was a historic legendary hip hop artist from London. She'll be here. So we're really excited about that.

In regards to Mr. Giles, I was a big fan. I didn't have much of a relationship with him personally, but him and my dad were really close. And he's done a really lot for the community. And he was always someone that my dad always wanted me to look for and support in any way that I could. And he'll be missed.

And we're getting to that point now where we're losing a lot of our legendary elders and just really wanting the community to harness their energy and the things that they contributed so that we keep them alive as part of the spirit of Rondo. And I am sure Mr. Giles will be joining us on Saturday at Rondo Days. I'm 100% positive he'll be there.

NINA MOINI: Very beautiful. Thank you both so much for being here. I appreciate you.

GAYLE SMALLER: Yes. And thank you for taking the time.

MARINA NEAL: Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. Gayle Smaller is a board chair with Rondo Avenue Inc, and Marina Neal is a board member with Rondo Days. Rondo Days again is this Saturday at the Martin Luther King Center in St. Paul.