King Khazm performs at the Waterfront Seattle Grand Opening Celebration

On a high from yesterday’s Grand Opening of Waterfront Park, a full day of community and celebration! It was like a convergence of the past, present and future, all in one space, filled with joy and love. Cheers and congratulations to Friends of Waterfront Park for such a remarkable milestone! And much love to my Zulu Radio fam!! Hard to imagine the seeds planted 20 years ago would last the test of time and the good music still transmits today on 91.3 KBCS!!

Taproot Fellowship Gathering in Washington DC

Memories of deep joy and inspiration return as I reflect on the Taproot Fellowship gathering last June in Washington DC!

In June 2025, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) hosted a national convening in Washington, D.C., bringing together nearly 50 traditional artists from across the United States and its territories. The gathering marked the first in-person meeting of Taproot Fellows from both the 2024 and 2025 cohorts—an unprecedented opportunity to build relationships, exchange knowledge, and strengthen a growing national network of traditional artists working at the intersections of culture, health, justice, and community resilience.

The Taproot Fellowship is a flagship initiative of ACTA’s Taproot Artists & Community Trust, funded by the Mellon Foundation. It provides catalytic support for traditional artists and culture bearers across the U.S., each of whom receives $50,000 in unrestricted funding and an additional $10,000 for community-focused initiatives. Over the course of two years, the program will distribute $3 million directly to artists, along with tailored support and visibility efforts designed to strengthen cultural ecosystems and transmission at the grassroots level.

The convening took place over three days and included a thoughtfully curated series of activities informed by a volunteer committee of Fellows, designed to foster cross-cultural exchange, relationship-building, and reflection. After a roomy half day of introductions, Fellows participated in peer-led workshops that highlighted the breadth and depth of traditional arts across regions. Penobscot basketmaker from Maine, Theresa Secord, led a hands-on session in ash wood and sweetgrass bookmark weaving; San Antonio-based ceramicist VerĂłnica Castillo offered a workshop in painting ceramic arbolitos, a vibrant Mexican folk art form; and taiko artists PJ and Roy Hirabayashi, co-founders of San Jose Taiko, led participants in a circle dance grounded in Japanese American rhythms and movement.

In a separate session, Wisconsin-based Haudenosaunee raised beadworker Karen Ann Hoffman guided participants in making traditional strawberry pincushions, while Georgia blues musician Jontavious Willis offered an immersive workshop on the roots and range of the blues, in collaboration with Chicago harmonica player Billy Branch. Puerto Rican theater artist Pedro Adorno Irizarry, co-founder of Agua, Sol y Sereno, facilitated an experimental session exploring “the encounter” through collective movement and performance.

Fellows visited the Library of Congress for an “Ask an Archivist” session with staff from the American Folklife Center (AFC), gaining insight into how traditional knowledge is archived and shared at the national level. During this session, 2024 Maine-based Fellow Dr. Dwayne Tomah spoke about his work with the AFC on “rematriating” recordings of the Passamaquoddy language to his community. ACTA and the AFC also co-hosted a formal reception, honoring the Fellows’ contributions to the country’s cultural heritage, and hearing from representatives from Congressional offices, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress and the Taproot Fellows.

Additional visits to the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the National Museum of the American Indian invited reflection on institutional narratives, representation, and the role of cultural heritage in public memory. Evening gatherings—including a final open mic with art sharings and a community dinner—offered moments of celebration, storytelling, and connection, reinforcing a shared commitment to cultural continuity across disciplines, generations, and geographies.

Bringing together artists from such geographically and culturally diverse communities—including Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Alaska, and rural regions of the continental U.S.—was both logistically ambitious and strategically vital. Many of these practitioners work in historically underfunded and under-recognized cultural traditions. The convening served not only as a networking opportunity, but as a visible affirmation of the value of traditional arts to the national narrative.

For ACTA, the convening underscores our commitment to expanding access, visibility, and resources for traditional artists across the country. It also reflects a growing recognition—within philanthropy and the public sector—of the central role culture plays in building community health, cohesion, and resilience.


The Taproot Fellowship continues to serve as a model for what it looks like to support culture bearers holistically: not simply through project funding, but through long-term investment in people, practices, and the systems of care that surround them. We thank our funders, the Mellon Foundation, and the Maxwell-Hanrahan Foundation, for making this gathering possible.

To learn more about the Taproot Fellowship and meet the Fellows, visit taproot.actaonline.org