Mwalim Comes to The Forgotten Roots Festival

Born from community vision and cultural urgency, the Forgotten Roots Festival returns to Interwoven Artist Studio (634 Pleasant Street) with a powerful lineup that reclaims and redefines American roots music. Organized primarily by members of the Cape Verdean, Wampanoag, African American, and Afro-Caribbean communities, the festival was created to fill a longstanding gap in the New Bedford cultural landscape - offering a space where the full, rich spectrum of ancestral and diasporic musical traditions could be heard, honored, and celebrated.

Presented by Oversoul Theatre Collective, Inc., the free, all-ages festival challenges the narrow definitions of Americana that have excluded and erased the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and global south communities. In particular, it responds to the legacy of industrialist Henry Ford, who, in the 1920s, actively worked to elevate Anglo-American folk music while suppressing the rising popularity of jazz, blues, and other Black musical forms. The Forgotten Roots Festival restores those lost narratives and puts cultural truth back at the center of the stage.

A headlining act at this year's festival is Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor, whose acoustic soul and blues set begins at 6:30 PM. A master storyteller and genre-blending musician, Mwalim's roots run deep. He began as a classically trained violist, performing at Carnegie Hall before the age of 14, and at 16 became one of the youngest session musicians in EMI Records history.

While attending New York's Music & Art High School, Mwalim took up piano in pursuit of becoming a composer - a step that would launch a life in jazz, funk, and soul. Over the years, he has become a dynamic vocalist, pianist/organist, and composer, earning three New England Urban Music Awards for Best Male Jazz Artist and four Silver Arrow Awards for his contributions to Native American music. He is also the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships that recognize his work as an artist, cultural educator, and thought leader.

He is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated soul-funk collective The GroovaLottos, but in 2020, his creative journey took another turn as he began studying guitar and diving deep into blues, Afro-Caribbean, and Bossa Nova styles. That exploration led to the creation of his raw and intimate acoustic album THUNDERCHILD, recorded partially in a Montreal hotel room and filled with new works and reimagined classics.

Mwalim's acoustic performance at the festival offers a rare and revealing glimpse into that new creative chapter - a stripped-down, soul-deep experience that reflects not only musical evolution but cultural reclamation.

The Forgotten Roots Festival is presented by Oversoul Theatre Collective, Inc. and is supported in part by Mass Development TDI, Polyphonic Studios, New Bedford Creative, Mass Cultural Council, Osborne Trust Fellowship, the Leduc Center for Civic Engagement, and WNB One Radio.

For full festival details, visit: http://linktr.ee/oversoultheatrecollective