Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival

Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival Celebrating blackness in American roots music!

06/01/2026

FWAAMFest 2026 Highlight: .m.blount

Initially recognized for his skill as a string band musician, Blount has charted an unprecedented, Afrofuturist course on his pilgrimage through sound archives and song collections. In his hands, the banjo, fiddle, electric guitar and synthesizer become ceremonial objects used to channel the insurgent creativity of his forebears. Blount’s performances - like his recent Smithsonian Folkways releases, symbiont (‘24) and The New Faith (‘22) - merge centuries-old traditional songs with trappings and techniques of modern Black genres. This “genrequeer” approach to the traditions has earned his music a place in the very same archives from which he extracts his repertoire.

In his set, Jake was supported by

05/29/2026

Today’s FWAAMFest highlight features Fort Worth’s own Killer Bug!

James “Killer Bug” Morris is a Fort Worth-born and raised blues and R&B singer. Over decades of performing, he has become a legend within the Dallas/Fort Worth music scene. Killer Bug is known for his signature style, from wardrobe to vocals to dance moves that wow audiences each time he steps on stage.

Killer Bug earned his stage name while working at Fort Worth’s KNOK radio in the 1980s. He wore many hats at the station: porter, driver, mail clerk, systems engineer, and DJ. He also travelled around the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area doing remote broadcasts. After one such broadcast the DJ announced him as “Killer Bug” on air, and the nickname is now history.

05/26/2026

FWAAMFest highlight: Sunny War

Chattanooga-based street singer, guitarist, and roots music revolutionary has always been an outsider, always felt the drive to define her place in the world through music and songwriting. Her restless spirit, a byproduct of growing up semi-nomadic with a single mother, led her to Venice Beach, California, where she’s been grinding the pavement for some years now, making a name for her prodigious guitar work and incisive songwriting, which touches on everything from police violence to alcoholism to love found and lost.

05/22/2026

Today’s FWAAMFest 2026 highlight features

Hailing from the sunshine state of Florida, Grace Givertz captivates audiences with her indie folk compositions, blending earworm melodies with heartfelt storytelling. As a multi-instrumentalist, she infuses her music with a diverse array of sounds, weaving folk, Americana, and indie rock into a tapestry uniquely her own.

05/20/2026

Today’s FWAAMFest 2026 highlight features

Carl Nichols has been releasing music under the Buffalo Nichols moniker since 2021, but his commitment to creative expression dates back to his teens. Refusing to bend to genre expectations, his music owes as much to the traditions of the blues as it does to the fuzz and distortion of shoegaze. Following the lead of his idiosyncratic artistic desires means that Buffalo Nichols continues to confound, continues to experiment, and continues to find new audiences for his heartfelt, emotionally heavy output.

05/18/2026

activates the FWAAMFest 2026 crowd as the festival opener, bringing her signature blend of soul, gospel, and a touch of funk all the way from Seattle, Washington.

Lady A’s work in music is wide-ranging; she’s a singer, songwriter, radio host, educator, and event producer. Her mission is to inspire audiences, and allow her work positively impact others.

05/16/2026

Another highlight from FWAAMFest 2026, featuring Anne Harris!
harris.music is a roots and blues fiddle player and singer-songwriter based in Chicago. Harris was born and raised in a small southwestern Ohio town in a household filled with various styles of music, and describes herself as having been in love with the violin since she was three.

This September Harris will be rejoining and for the next run of their “Room on the Porch” tour.

05/14/2026

New logo reveal at the end 😊

This year FWAAMFest held its first free kickoff dance the night before the festival.

It was the culmination of our newest initiative, African American Dance Caller Pathways, doing our part to reconnect Black folks to the art of traditional dance calling and its Black cultural and historical roots.

At the dance, the pilot cohort of instructors and budding callers taught dances to people of all ages, backed by a live band led by fiddlers Shanice Richards and Isaiah Sibi.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the joy of that night!

AADCP was made possible by and

Your support can help us move into year two and deepen our work! Donate at FWAAMFest.com.

05/12/2026

FWAAMFest 26 performance highlight:
Justin Robinson

Justin Robinson is a Grammy-winning musician and vocalist, cultural preservationist, and historic foodways expert. Robinson has used his wide range of interests and talents to preserve North Carolina’s African American history and culture, connecting people to the past and to the world around them.

He played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, thereby working to preserve traditional forms of music, to introduce new generations to musical legends like Joe Thompson, and to remind audiences that the fiddle was, historically, an African American instrument.

05/08/2026

Next up in our FWAAMFest 2026 recaps is Martha Redbone!

Martha Redbone is an American vocalist, songwriter, composer, educator, and United States Artist Fellow, celebrated for her “brilliant collision of cultures” (The New Yorker), embodying the folk and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in “Coal country” Harlan County, Kentucky with the eclectic grit of her teenage years in pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Inheriting her powerful gospel-singing father’s voice and the resilient spirit of her mother’s Southeastern Indigenous and African American culture, Martha’s culture and heritage broadens the boundaries of American Roots music. Her songs and storytelling share her life experience as an Afro-Indigenous mother in an ever-changing world.

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1519 Lipscomb Street
Fort Worth, TX
76104

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