Celebrate Black History Month with the Black Banjo Reclamation Project
Published on February 09, 2026
On Friday, February 27, the Alameda Free Library is honored to welcome Hannah Mayree, Seraphina Perkins, and Azere Wilson of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project for an afternoon of Black music history and performance in honor of Black History Month. Each artist will perform a set, followed by some jamming and cross-pollination with space for audience questions.
Date: Friday, February 27, from 1-3pm
Location: Alameda Free Library, Main Branch, 1550 Oak St. Alameda, CA 94501
The Black Banjo Reclamation Project (BBRP) is is a creative eco-system that curates musical, cultural, and land-based healing opportunities for Black, Afro-Diasporic communities around the world to work with the banjo as a tool for reclaiming ancestral wisdom & creating Afro-futures. By teaching and learning banjo playing techniques with African and Black centered perspectives, their unique facilitation of programs, which includes banjo musical education, building & repair, and restorative somatic community experiences, highlights the practice of land stewardship and the roots of Black liberation found in our folkways. Through economic solidarity and self-determination, we are paving pathways for restorative narratives to use music as a tool for transforming our world.
About Hannah Mayree: Hannah Mayree (they/them) is an artist and musician whose work as a banjoist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist has made cultural waves over the last decade, as a conduit for music and craft expansion in Black folk expression. Hannah has a body of work that highlights original and traditional banjo compositions as well as harmonies through acoustic live vocal looping and involves audiences in community singing.
On the dawn of releasing their second studio album following the 2017, Thoughts of the Night, Hannah’s evolution as a musician has included holding down solo performances as well as duo, trio, and full band configurations and highlights both the Black string and tradition as well as innovating between genres, expressing the conditions of our world and sparking change through culturally stewarded experiences they curate for music loving communities.
They founded and creatively direct the Black Banjo Reclamation Project which is currently creating musical, cultural, and land-based opportunities for Black, Afro-Diasporic communities around the world to work with the banjo as a tool for reclaiming ancestral wisdom & creating Afro-futures.
About Seraphina Perkins: Seraphina Perkins is a multidisplinary artist, musician, seamstress, and storyteller. She explores themes of ancestral reverence with depth and ethereal softness, through the banjo, guitar, and dulcimer. Folk music and craft holds a grounding force in her life that she loves to share as an offering, and helps to connect with spirit in a tangible way.
About Azere Wilson: Azere Wilson is a bluesy, roots Americana musician from the hills of central California. Old-time blues, Americana, and Folk music are her volumes of truth. She excavates America's past through the lens of her life experiences as a mixed race Black woman. Her elders are Nina Simone, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and traditional Black music and bluegrass. Azere breathes new life into old music from the early 1900s and melds her originals with a jazzy, folk blues vibe.
Azere’s first album The Rock the Roots the Lean On Me is now available on Spotify, Apple Music, and all streaming platforms and can be purchased on vinyl or cd on her website azerewilson.com.
No registration is required; please bring your friends and loved ones and see you there!
This free program is made possible through the generous support of the Friends of the Alameda Free Library.
Alameda Free Library is located at 1550 Oak Street and is wheelchair accessible. The Main Library is served by AC Transit routes 21 and 51A. Bicycle parking racks are available at the library. For more information on this and other library programs, visit www.alamedafree.org/Events-directory/Calendar or contact the Alameda Free Library Reference Desk at 510-747-7713.