Black Banjo and Fiddle Fellowship

Angela M. Wellman, Ph.D.

Angela M. Wellman, Ph.D., had the good fortune of growing up surrounded by music. From the time she was in elementary school until she earned her Ph.D., she studied in music conservatories. Wellman has been a performing musician, a music educator, and an activist, now following in her family’s footsteps as an institution-building village woman. “I grew up in a family of institution-builders who worked to illuminate and lift people up through music.” Wellman plays the trombone and uses music as a way of educating people about the gift of music unwittingly brought to the Northern Hemisphere through the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

She founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC) twenty years ago. “I was an artist-in-residence at a school in Oakland, and I noticed a lot of kids who needed to be in my after-school classes who weren’t there. Instead, they were being tutored on other subjects so they could pass the school’s standardized tests. It is my belief that children must have similar access to music.” Multiple studies have shown that music students score better in math, science, and English than their non-musical peers.

To remedy the problem, Wellman founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music twenty years ago to provide all interested students with a music education. The conservatory is a project of Music is eXtraordinary (MIX), a non-profit Wellman founded in 2001. She consulted with area schools to develop music programs that reflected each school’s culture. The OPC followed in 2005 with a mission of “opening the world of music to all through access to quality, economical instruction in a nurturing environment in a quest to preserve the musical traditions of Oakland.” Wellman says that the public conservatory speaks to roots music in this country.

In 2023, plans were made for a Black Banjo and Fiddle Fellowship (BBFF), the first of its kind at OPC. A collaboration with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention, the project aims to repatriate old-time music in African American communities and illuminate the Black experience in creating old-time music. A call went out for BBFF applications, and the first Fellows were selected from the applicants for the program.

The two-year paid fellowship program trains Black musicians on the rich history of old-time music. Recognizing the historical and cultural ruptures that erased the Black origins of fiddle and banjo musicians, the BBFF works to ensure the tradition is sustained by also offering a teacher-training program where apprentices are trained to pass down the knowledge they gain about old-time music on banjo or fiddle. They also gain skills in leading jam sessions.

Three Fellows were selected for the first “class” of Fellows. Darcy Ford, a fiddle player, is a trained violinist and educator who has taught strings in public schools for twenty years. She co-founded Stockton Soul, a non-profit soul orchestra “dedicated to educating, empowering, and inspiring audiences through the performance of Black music.” A multi-instrumentalist, art educator, and Black music researcher, Joe Zavaan Johnson, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at Indiana University-Bloomington. Rounding out the Fellows is Patrice Strahan, who cultivated her love for music in a common starting place – the church. She has also played in bands and is driven by her passion for “engaged spiritual social justice” and “communal music at the intersection of land stewardship/kinship.” She is dedicated to ensuring Black old-time music is learned and passed on to future generations.

The goal is for the Fellows to learn to play banjo and fiddle tunes, cultivating a historical context of Black banjo and fiddle origins and their contributions to old-time music. They will then create educational content for teaching banjo and fiddle music at the OPC and curate and lead old-time jam sessions.

The BBFF has now completed year one of the first two-year fellowship. “The first year went very well,” says Wellman. “This is our first time doing something like this, and with that came a few bumps, but we have learned from those. The first year was a time to go deep with the culture-bearers. In this second year, the Fellows have begun teaching a few free classes to get people involved. The response has been overwhelmingly positive – we have had to add more classes.”

Faculty for the BBFF includes Earl White, a renowned fiddler who has been performing and preserving Appalachian music and dance for over 50 years. He is accompanied by Jake Blount, who is an award-winning musician and banjo player. Blount has performed at the Kennedy Center, Newport Folk Festival, and on the National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk series. Tony Thomas, a leading historian on banjo origins and American banjo playing, will be facilitating the program's history seminar.

Dom Flemons, a co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is quoted on the BBFF’s website: “The Black Banjo and Fiddle Fellowship is a missing link in the propagation of the influence of the African American role in the development of American music. The African American experience touches every genre of music created in America…and the knowledge of this fact must be cultivated in the African American musical community.”