Renowned banjoist, pianist, guitarist, bassist, ukuleleist, educator, and scholar-activist Brandi Waller-Pace led a career talk and a roots workshop on campus this Tuesday. Conservatory and College students alike had the opportunity to hear Waller-Pace speak on their unique career path and even play alongside them.
Waller-Pace is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Decolonizing the Music Room, and they host the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival. They’re a Howard University graduate and have performed with Carmen Lundy, Andy Bey, Nnenna Freelon, Bobby McFerrin, and critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble Afro Blue.
Assistant Visiting Professor of Theater Katy Early, OC ’16, reached out to Director of Musical Studies, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Administrative Coordinator, and Senior Lecturer Kathryn Metz, and the two worked with Associate Dean of Artistic Programming and External Relations Sally Takada to bring Waller-Pace to campus. Early, who will be directing folk musical Haymarket this spring, was hoping to give context and hands-on experience to the actor-musicians in the show.
“The origin story goes all the way back to the 20-teens when [Professor of Theater and Africana Studies] Caroline Jackson Smith was directing a musical called Dessa Rose that I was in,” Early said. “Dessa Rose had a banjo in it, so this guest artist came in to talk about the African roots of the banjo. It was an important lesson for me as a 21-year-old white girl in a musical directed by Caroline Jackson Smith to learn. When I knew I was going to be doing a musical with banjos in it, Haymarket, it was sort of this compulsive, ‘What expert in the banjo and roots music might be interested in coming to Oberlin to do a workshop?’ … The first person [Metz] thought of was Brandi.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Waller-Pace and Metz sat down for a public conversation on alternative career paths for musicians. Waller-Pace discussed the many hats they wear, as not only a musician and activist, but as a personal marketer, publicist, photographer, and manager. They also talked about the nonprofit work they do.
“I started the [Fort Worth African American Roots Music] Festival because [of] a gap in representing the history and having spaces that are centered around Blackness.” Waller-Pace said later that day. “I had a little curation experience and contract experience doing online stuff during the shutdown, but everything else from there was cobbling together answers. … It’s been really tough, but the people who are down for it are really down for it, so it’s been really rewarding. This year, we have a partnership with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so this is our first year where I don’t have to wonder where the money’s coming from.”
Later that evening, about a dozen musicians from both the College and the Conservatory circled up with Waller-Pace and played a few old-time tunes, while the rest of the audience at the Cat in the Cream sang along. Despite the workshop’s simplicity and intimacy, it opened a window into Waller-Pace’s approach to political residency through music. They led the group in a freedom song, “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and encouraged active communal engagement with our current political moment by asking students to add their own verses. Phrases like “Fighting for our future,” “Standing with our neighbors,” and “ICE out of our cities” rang out.
“When I found old-time music, it was, I feel, a little liberating,” Waller-Pace said at the event. “It was freeing from a technical perspective, but also the level of competency you have to reach in order to participate, community music making-wise, is really low. You can always build on it, but if you can get to the point where you can be proficient … in a couple of keys, you can sit down and make music with people. … It feels more like home.”
Despite the accessibility of this musical tradition, it has not been particularly well preserved, often severed from its history and its modern relevance. Early commented on the necessity of passing on this oral tradition.
“When I was a student at Oberlin, the Punch Brothers were in residence, so we would be jamming with them in the halls, and they played their album, The Phosphorescent Blues, for us first out of anyone in the world,” Early said. “There’s this huge tradition of folk music at Oberlin, and yet, if we don’t keep it up, generations won’t get it.”
Some of this maintenance, Waller-Pace argued, is allowing that definition of folk music to broaden.
“As far as the future of [old-time music] in resistance and freedom movements, I don’t think it’s going to go away, but I really like how the term ‘folk’ specifically, is becoming more expansive,” Waller-Pace said. “What are our focuses of today? What are we calling those things now?”
