Karen Celia Heil is a San Francisco Bay Area musician that plays and teaches what is known as Old-time music on fiddle, guitar, and sometimes other stringed instruments. She sometimes travels nationally and internationally for musical engagements, both performing and teaching.
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Karen is currently working on many projects and music community issues with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention, and the board of the California Bluegrass Association.
This is a statement regarding the musical traditions that I, and my musical community, are a part of:
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As appreciators and players of early American traditional music, we actively question what it means to share this music in the context of systemic racism.
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My community is engaging and learning about the immense contributions of Black and Indigenous people and their cultures to this music, in the past and in the present.
It would not exist without them.
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We acknowledge the forces that have historically denied these contributions and have worked to sever their living connections to this music. We also acknowledge our own complicity in this oppression. As we play this music, we are reckoning with our history and present condition. We strive to build a road toward reparation.
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Here are links to the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention website; and the Black Banjo Fiddle Fellowship website at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music for more information about our ongoing work, and plans for the future.
