THE FORGOTTEN ROOTS FESTIVAL Premieres at the Interwoven Artist Studio In July

The Forgotten Roots Festival, taking place Saturday, July 19, 2025, at Interwoven Artist Studio, is a celebration of the unspoken history behind American roots music-a history carried by Black, Native, and Melungeon communities whose voices and rhythms helped shape the soul of this country. Long overlooked in mainstream narratives, their influence runs deep, from the Gullah coast of South Carolina to the mountains of Appalachia.

The rolling hills of Appalachia have always held more than the sound of banjos and ballads-they hold the memory of a diverse and interconnected people. Alongside Scots-Irish settlers lived free Black families, displaced Native nations, and Melungeon communities-people of African, Indigenous, and European ancestry who created a culture outside of the rigid racial categories imposed by early America. These communities didn't just coexist; they collaborated, traded songs, and built a musical language that reflected their blended lives.

Farther south, along the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia, the Gullah people-descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on rice plantations-preserved a deep cultural heritage rich with language, rhythm, and spiritual traditions. Gullah music retains strong African elements, including ring shouts, call-and-response, and polyrhythms, influencing gospel, blues, and jazz. The connection between the Gullah and Native communities in the region also created shared practices in music and ritual, rooted in land, memory, and survival.

From the Carolina coast to the Appalachian highlands, these cultural exchanges birthed music steeped in African rhythm, Native chant, and the modal scales of British Isles folk tunes. Instruments like the banjo-of West African origin-were played on Appalachian porches and in Gullah praise houses. Ceremonial rhythms found new life in work songs and ballads. In this music, joy and sorrow were braided together across generations.

In the early 20th century, industrialist Henry Ford tried to rewrite that history. He launched a national campaign to promote "authentic" American music-funding fiddle contests and promoting Appalachian string bands as long as they reflected a white, Eurocentric image. Black, Native, and culturally blended influences were deliberately erased from the story. But the sound of the people couldn't be silenced. It kept pulsing through the hills and hollers, through the Sea Islands and Southern cities-on records, in churches, and in kitchen table jam sessions.

Artists like Lead Belly, whose 12-string guitar told stories of labor, prison, and Southern life, blended folk tradition with blues power. Sister Rosetta Tharpe broke barriers and bent gospel into rock and roll, with the bite of rural grit and sacred fire. Howlin' Wolf, whose roots include Choctaw ancestry, sang with a force that seemed to summon the ancestors. And Ritchie Havens, raised in a Brooklyn family with Blackfoot and African American heritage, turned the urgency of freedom into rhythm, drawing from folk, tribal memory, and blues alike.

The Forgotten Roots Festival brings this living legacy to the forefront. It's more than a performance-it's an act of cultural restoration. At Interwoven Artist Studio, audiences will experience music that honors the past while pointing toward the future. Afro-Indigenous musicians, Appalachian soul artists, Gullah-rooted storytellers, blues poets, and genre-blending performers will take the stage to lift up the voices that commercial history tried to leave behind.

The Forgotten Roots Festival takes place Saturday, July 19, 2025, at 5:30 PM, at Interwoven Artist Studio, located at 634 Pleasant Street in downtown New Bedford, MA. Admission is free and open to the public. Come for the music, stay for the truth-and experience the sounds that helped build a nation from the ground up.

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