Country, roots and folk music in North Texas does not begin and end with a guy holding a guitar covering radio hits in a Stockyards bar, or George Strait’s shows at Dickies Arena — and Beyoncé is far from the first Black artist to work in the genre, even if she just became the first Black artist to win the best country album Grammy for Cowboy Carter.
Those are the kinds of misconceptions the fifth annual Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival is designed to debunk, as both the only roots festival in Texas that spotlights Black American musicians and one of the few such festivals in the nation.
“We are pushing to make sure that when Fort Worth is represented, the wide expanse of what’s available — the city’s diversity — is represented,” says Brandi Waller-Pace, the festival’s founder.
Waller-Pace, an artist herself, taught music to Fort Worth ISD elementary school students for a decade and helped shape the district’s music curriculum. The former teacher and mostly jazz- and neo-soul-versed musician, though, realized they had more to learn after they picked up the banjo — an instrument with roots in Africa, despite its strong association with rural America.
“It was such a deep historical connection,” Waller-Pace says. “I very quickly found community with other Black folks who were unearthing this history and spreading the word.”
That community led to Waller-Pace founding the festival, along with her nonprofit group Decolonizing the Music Room. Though it was hit with adversity almost instantly when the COVID-19 pandemic stifled plans for the first edition in 2020, the festival quickly became national in scope.
This year, artists include Dom Flemons, Kyshona Armstrong and Yasmin Williams (whom you may have just seen on NPR’s Tiny Desk series). Flemons, Waller-Pace says, will be bringing Fort Worth-specific music and stories to his performance, based on his expertise in the history of Black cowboys.
Waller-Pace says that if you go to the festival, you should bring your dancing shoes for the first-ever festival square dance. And bring your guitar, banjo or fiddle: “There’s always room to sit around and jam,” she says.
Details
March 15 from noon to 10 p.m. at Southside Preservation Hall, 1519 Lipscomb St., Fort Worth. General admission is $50, $35 for educators and school staff, $30 for students, and $20 for children ages 3-17. Free for younger kids. fwaamfest.com.
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