NB Roots and Branches is a two-day acoustic music and art festival “by and for the people” taking place annually on the 3rd week of July. The festival is 100% free to all and devoted to ensuring the various diverse communities of Greater New Bedford are represented on both the performance schedule and in the audience. It aims to have a positive impact on downtown New Bedford’s social, cultural, and business communities. The festival is organized under the co-direction of Jeff Angeley and Christian Camarao and the 2025 edition exists under the fiscal agency of Gallery X, a 501c3 at the heart of downtown New Bedford with whom we share common vision. As with our previous two iterations, we are an official City of New Bedford sponsored event through our relationship with Explore New Bedford, the city’s Department of Tourism. 

Our festival hosts performers of multiple genres of acoustic music as well as traditional dance, visual art, performance art, a parade, sculptural installation work, and a culminating moving panorama event. Performances take place at indoor “stages” in New Bedford’s small businesses, outdoor music and art areas hosted at Wing’s Court, Customs House Square, Market St, & Purchase St, and in the beautiful building of our aforementioned fiscal sponsor Gallery X. We collaborate with cultural partners and artist liaisons to reach a diverse population of performers who in turn help our festival to reach a broad audience of enthusiastic local and regional attendees.  

The inaugural 2023 NB Roots&Branches festival drew over 1000 attendees to hear 30 musical acts. 2024 doubled both the footprint of the festival and its attendance. The 2025 festival follows in the footsteps of last year’s event with the addition of new stages and activity areas to accommodate foreseeable growth of a festival that operated fully at capacity last year. We enter this year with an actionable plan for 12 stages, a culminating event venue, a maker space, a kick off dance, and a route along which installation work will be displayed during and long after the festival.

2025’s brings key artistic expansions and innovations in addition to the increased number of stages. First, we aim to solve the long recognized obstacle of connecting Purchase and Union to Upper William St. with a parade directly from another one of our creative growth areas, the participatory maker space in Wings Court facilitated by Hooly J Chan. And, to help keep that bridge intact beyond the festival, we use a third creative innovation: visual art installation work with the aim of space reclamation in Sears Court and the westernmost end of Market St. Also, with the involvement of The Vault, Roots&Branches has the opportunity to bring in programming that goes beyond the music, visual art, and dance we’ve worked to provide successfully for two years. Southcoast resident and Harvard theater professor James Stanley and performing partner Jesse Hawley (theater instructor at Tabor Academy) will pioneer short blocks of drama performance alongside other performance art practitioners on our new innovative stage. Add to that the expansion of our list of curators to include accomplished and respected pillars of the community like Amilton Tavares, the president of the Cape Verdean Vets Hall, and an extraordinarily talented traditional musician in his own right. 

NB Roots&Branches has an established track record of working successfully with area businesses, organizations, and government offices. In addition to our City of New Bedford sponsorship and fiscal relationship with Gallery X we work with businesses that are foundational to New Bedford’s downtown. We have ongoing multi-year relationships Destination Soups, Pour Farm Tavern, AprilEvans Beauty Lounge, Co-Creative Center, The Vault, No Problemo/Cummings Building, and Cafe Arpeggio, and we’re excited to have established new connections with venues that include Celia’s Boutique in 2025 to provide a unique and exciting concert venues. We additionally coordinate a partnership with the Symphony Music Shop and Jeremy Houle from the pro audio department of The University of Massachusetts Lowell to provide a large share of our sound tech and equipment needs. Our outreach efforts met with support from New Bedford Creative and other local institutions. Our strong foundation and connections give us confidence as we build for the future and provide ever increasing opportunities for artists and community attendees.