Dena Jennings and Wayne Henderson were selected by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) as a 2025 Taproot Fellow. The fellowship, presented in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, aims to support traditional artists and cultural stewards across the U.S. and invests in their communities.
Dena Jennings makes and plays stringed instruments at her farm studio in Nasons, where she also hosts meditations, sells herbs and plants and puts on a gathering of Black musicians called “The Thang.” Her instruments are made using gourds she grows, with necks and pegs carved from maple, cedar, juniper or persimmon — all harvested on the farm. In 2023, Dena was a mentor artist in our apprenticeship program. Her apprentice Samaria Marley learned the entire process of crafting a gourd banjo, starting with the planting of a seed.
“The instruments that I build today are based on what happened to those instruments when they came here from Africa, by way of the Caribbean, into Appalachia.”
Dena Jennings
Wayne Henderson is a luthier who was born and raised in Grayson County where he still lives and works. He built his first guitar using traced patterns and wood from the bottom of a dresser drawer and is now considered one of the most extraordinary instrument makers in the world. He learned much of what he knows from the legendary Albert Hash, an old-time musician and instrument maker who lived a few miles away. In 1995, Wayne received the National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s greatest honor for those who practice traditional arts. He’s been a long-time partner and friend of the Virginia Folklife Program including multiple appearances on Virginia Folklife stages and an apprenticeship in 2013 with his daughter Jayne Henderson.
“Albert [Hash] got a fiddle out of a drawer, it was covered up with other stuff in there. He made it in 1953 and it was just the most beautiful thing you ever saw. It was an inspiration, the thought that somebody’s hands could make something like that. You wouldn’t have believed it.”
Wayne Henderson, interviewed by Ian Moriarty in 2024′
Each Taproot Fellow receives $50,000 in unrestricted funding and an additional $10,000 to allocate toward a person or initiative in their community. ACTA announced 25 fellows in total. They include an Iroquois bead worker from Wisconsin, a celebrated Gullah Geechee chef and culture bearer from South Carolina, a Vietnamese traditional musician from California, and more. Amy Kitchener, ACTA’s executive director, described the fellows as “keepers of stories, songs, and sacred practices that have carried communities through generations of upheaval.” She continued, “this fellowship isn’t just about preservation, it’s about power. Cultural power. Community power. The kind of power that grows from the roots up.”
To explore the stories and work of the Taproot Fellows, visit taproot.actaonline.org.
