Musicians are touring Massachusetts as part of a program to “reclaim folk music” on behalf of people of color.
Earlier this month, Anand Nayak performed an original song at Forbes Library in Northampton. He was sitting with fellow singer-songwriters Pamela Means of western Massachusetts and Naomi Westwater of Boston.
In 2024, Westwater first launched this traveling program called Reclaiming Folk.
"As a folk musician of color, I've often been the only person of color in the room, in a folk venue," Westwater said. "And I felt for a while kind of like I wasn't allowed to be in folk music."
After some research, she said she realized people of color invented the genre of folk music; the banjo came from Africa. But she felt much of that history had been erased in American culture.
"I think (musical) genre in general was a segregation tool. So you had a lot of white artists pushed into folk and black artists pushed into rhythm and blues," Westwater said. "I think a lot of the protest music coming out of the 60s and 70s ended up really highlighting white artists, even though artists of color were were writing those songs and playing those songs as well. But a lot of commercial success was given to white artists."
So Westwater raised funds from private and public arts organizations to highlight today's musicians of color from different regions around Massachusetts.
"Just trying to reclaim and create this space and uplift the artists who are doing this work and, and give flowers to the artists who came before us, who were doing the work all along, sometimes in the shadows."
Reclaiming Folk has performed in 15 Massachusetts locations so far.
