Behind the Festival: Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival
The Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival (FWAAMFest) is a groundbreaking event dedicated to celebrating and reclaiming the Black roots of American folk, blues, bluegrass, and old-time music. Now in its fifth year, the festival has grown into a vital space for artists and audiences to connect with Black musical traditions and push back against the erasure of Black artists in these genres.
Founder and organizer of FWAAMFest, Brandi Waller-Pace (they/she), a musician, educator, and activist, has spent years advocating for equity in music education and performance spaces. As the Founder and Executive Director of Decolonizing the Music Room, Brandi works to center Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices in music education, challenging systems that have historically excluded them. Their work with DtMR led to the creation of FWAAMFest, a festival that not only showcases incredible Black artists in roots music but also features educational presentations, workshops, and for the first time this year: a community square dance!
I sent some questions over to Brandi about the founding of FWAAMFest, its impact on artists and the local community, and what’s in store for 2025. Read on to learn more about this special event!
The 5th annual Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival takes place in Fort Worth, TX, on Saturday, March 15, 2025. Tickets are available now for just $50, with discounts for educators and students.
FWAAMFest is made possible thanks to donations and sponsorship from people like you. If you are able to support this important event, please go to FWAAMFest.com or text "FWAAMFest" to 53-555 to donate. Donations are tax deductible.
You have a deep background as a public school music educator. How did that lead you to the formation of Decolonizing the Music Room? Were there any pivotal moments or realizations that pushed you toward this work?
Brandi: During my time teaching I engaged in a great deal of teacher training in the major general music methods and approaches used by music educators. Between earning my bachelor's and master's in Jazz Studies at Howard University (an HBCU) and my cultural background as a southern U.S.-born Black person, I realized the music that was my "canon" and the ways of making music that were most familiar to me were not the standard in U.S. music education training.
I was teaching in an environment that was about 50/50 Black and Latine children who were mostly first gen or had come to the U.S. as young children. I began to look at how little they were reflected in music education, and the general systemic disparities with my school district. I launched into committee work in the district and did a wonderful fellowship program called Leadership ISD - both helped me gain a better understanding of data, funding information, district policy, and history of our inequitable education system. I later did some music curriculum cowriting and observed how the typical flow of those processes could impede the necessary deep critical thought, research, and care needed to create an equitable curriculum that is truly reflective of a wide range of cultures and traditions.
During my last couple of years teaching, I picked up the banjo. I learned more deeply about its Black origins, while also gigging in a stringband in my area. I learned tunes and history alongside the erasure of blackness and the presence of tunes that were rooted in Blackface minstrelsy. One day a musician friend noticed a song I mentioned from a classroom book, pointing out its direct roots in a deeply racist song recorded in the early 20th century. I began to dig more into these connections and talk to my music education peers about what I found. This led to a couple of colleagues suggesting I put the info I was finding and talking about in one site. I reached out to a group of music educators and we built up some writing and launched the Decolonizing the Music Room site and Facebook group. Our work spread and we began getting requests to present to educators. Dr. Lorelei Batisla-ong was a huge part of the work, including being the lead in editing content. Before long we took a look at what we were building, and nonprofit was the organizational structure that fit best; we became official in January of 2020.
The Fort Worth African American Roots Festival grew out of your work with Decolonizing the Music Room. What inspired you to launch the festival? Are there other events that influenced the direction of the festival?
Brandi: After picking up the banjo, I was fortunate enough to connect with the growing community of Black banjoists, fiddlers, other Black old time and roots musicians, and other great folks making music and doing research into the music's history. I was inspired by the work of people creating and engaging in work that centers Black folks, like Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson; events that created spaces to dig deep into our traditions such as the Black Banjo Gathering, the Affrolachian On-Time Gathering (also known as “The Thang”), Dr. Sais Kamalidiin's African American Roots Music Circle event at Howard University, and collaborations with peers like as Lillian Werbin and Jake Blount. In the summer of 2019, my family and I attended Augusta Heritage Center's Old Time and Blues & Swing camp week; there I attended a dialogue about diversifying old time events. We talked about the importance of diversifying existing spaces, and of creating our own. I thought to myself, " You know what? I can create a space for us in Fort Worth." And here we are.
Two years ago, you wrote a guest column for The Bluegrass Situation regarding Black History Month. I loved what you wrote about the concept of inclusion, and diversifying existing spaces versus creating new ones. As a space created intentionally to center Black artists in American roots music, what impact has FWAAAMFest had on you, the artists, and the local community? How can others support its mission?
Brandi: As an organizer curating and doing booking, contracts, logistics, etc., it's made me feel much more capable and competent than I ever imagined I would be in the music industry. The positive feedback I have received from FWAAMFest artists and others in the industry has let me know that the space I envisioned is serving just the purpose I had hoped it would; artists have said it felt like a family reunion, that the space was healing, that there was a safety to the space. That is the impact I wanted to have, and I feel it for myself as well.
The community partnerships we built with Southside Preservation Hall and Shiny Box Pictures facilitated the first FWAAMFest, and community partnerships have grown over the years and lead to a lot more eyes on FWAAMFest. Much of the community comes in without much knowledge of the music they will hear, often not realizing that Black folks making it aren't interlopers, we are progenitors and culture bearers. Black folks in the community who have their first introduction to all of this history and current music making are so excited to see themselves reflected; the rest of the community experiences the joy and learning and appreciates that we have something special going on that they won't quite find anywhere else.
Our biggest need is financial resources. Black led nonprofits and events are woefully underfunded, and always need steady support. There isn't yet a store of funds somewhere to fall back on, every year we are building and fundraising anew. We want to pay artists equitably, and we want to have the security of knowing we can continue this work and not sit in precarity each year. And we need to be able to provide a livable wage for the work of running the event and organization. If people can donate and sponsor, we are grateful for any level of support, and would love it if others will share this event and our work with their networks.
This year marks the fifth edition of the festival! How has it evolved over time? What do you hope for the future of FWAAMFest?
Brandi: Over time our network of musicians has grown and as a result the music we feature has become more expansive. Music of the first year was pretty music old time and early blues, but since then we've had bluegrass, folk, and more progressive ways of making music - like Kafari, who taught a rhythm bone workshop and did a set incorporating them into his looping and piano work, Demeanor, who brought the banjo into his hip-hop set, and guitarist/singer/songwriter Jackie Venson with an electric and rock-infused set illustrating her place in the continuum of blues and rock. This year we have Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band, and it will be our first year with that tradition being represented.
Most importantly, I hope that FWAAMFest has the financial support to keep going into the future. Beyond that, I would love to see a more educational component tied to the festival's mission so our city can be part of nurturing the growing number of Black roots musicians across the land, especially banjo players and fiddlers. One day, I hope to see a younger generation grow carrying the torch.
Over the past five years, are there any moments at FWAAMFest that stand out as especially important, impactful, or joyful - whether on stage, in the crowd, or behind the scenes?
Kaia Kater headlined the festival a few years back; at the end of the night we had a short jam. She later told me it was her first time being in an old time jam surrounded by Black folks, and how powerful that was. That definitely made my heart swell.
Last year was a hard funding year, and we sorely needed to get enough to cover our costs. Rhiannon Giddens, who is on our board, put up a $5000 matching donation to get three other donations and help us meet our needs. The other matching donations came through the labor Black women organization leaders/activists in our local community. I will never forget that Black women and femmes look out for one another; how we've always looked out for each other.
FWAAMFest goes beyond just music. What can visitors expect this year beyond the performances?
We are happy to be putting on our first structured square dance this year! Fiddler Isaiah Sibi will be leading and the band will include Joe Z. Johnson, myself, and Isaiah's dad Howard Rains, who is an accomplished musician himself. We will also have a rhythm bones workshop taught jointly by Kafari and Demeanor, and presentations from several artists on Black banjo history and reclamation, Black Cowboy music and culture, and the throughline from roots music to rap.
The Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival is happening in Fort Worth, TX on Saturday, March 15th, 2025. Tickets are available here for just $50, with discounts for educators and students.
The festival continues to run thanks to donations and sponsorship from people like you. If you would like to support this important event, please go to FWAAMFest.com or text "FWAAMFest" to 53-555 to donate. Donations are tax deductible.
Thank you to Brandi Waller-Pace for your time and all of your work!
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