The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is a vehicle to return instruments of African origin to the descendants of their original makers. Our theory of change is tied directly to re-appropriating our own culture by receiving banjos in the form of reparations and over time, gaining skills that will advance individuals and communities for generations to come. This includes ancestral survival and land based skills including fostering the trade of instrument building and repair. We are pursuing ancestral healing and envision a world where the act of remembering gives us the power to shape our world.
Hannah Mayree is a creative facilitator and musician who’s work and art lends itself as a tool for redesigning and reconnecting to our roots as humans on this planet. A banjoist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Hannah founded the Black Banjo Reclamation Project and is currently existing in Oakland and throughout the west coast corridor.
Hannah was born and raised in Sacramento CA, where the waters flow from Mount Shasta to the Oak Savanna foothills lining the valley, to the delta and the bay.
Mayree is a storyteller and creates a musical backdrop, weaving in folk music as a communication between cultures and through time. Composed while traversing Turtle Island, the American landscape, communing with people and plants, their songs incorporate African rhythms and diverse European and modern American folk traditions to express the profound mystery contained within all beings. Through tools of community gathering, social permaculture and self healing, new realities are constantly being crafted and actualized.