About Music. Dr. Craig Woodson is a percussionist, educational consultant, instrument maker, Applied Ethnomusicologist, and an active anti-racist. In the 1970s he began a lifelong career as a teaching artist presenting world music and instrument making assemblies and workshops in schools, and performing with major orchestras. During his first 15 years as a professional drum set player (MA on Tony Williams, UCLA, 1973) and hand drummer, he also studied and performed on drums from around the world--especially those from Ghana (photo), Cuba, South India, and the Middle East.

He started Ethnomusic, Inc. in 1976 to produce Ghanaian drums, specifically the Dondo and educational material. With this experience, he was invited to direct a university instrument-making project in Ghana, which he did for three years between 1977-84. During these years he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the Atumpan, Ghanaian talking drums (UCLA, 1983). He has designed over 100 simple musical instruments for students and educators to make, and holds 9 U.S. patents on African talking drum head designs. In the 1990's Dr. Woodson became a consultant to the Remo drum company, helping to develop the company’s African drums and Sound Shapes; the latter were based on his patents.

Since 1990, he has presented play-along concerts with major orchestras and Kronos Quartet, worked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, written the Roots of Rhythm (world drumming curriculum), received grants from the Percussion Marketing Council (NAMM Foundation), National Endowment for the Arts, made several videos, and continued to present programs, workshops and courses in schools and colleges.

About Woodson Family Reckoning. In 1984, at age 41, Dr. Woodson was shocked to learn that his ancestors in 1619 Jamestown, Virginia enslaved Africans from the early 1600s until 1865. After a period of embarrassed silence, though a friend Bette Cox (Executive Director, Black Experiences Expressed through Music, BEEM Foundation), Craig was able to meet an African American Woodson descendant of those enslaved, Dr. Edgar Woodson. Edgar is the great nephew of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History. As Edgar and Craig gradually realized their connections, they became family. In the 1990s, Craig requested that they hold a public apology ceremony. That event called Sankofa took place in Los Angeles October 11, 1998. Over the next twenty-five years they grew even closer as a family and on February 19, 2023 their story was aired on National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2023/02/19/1154563737/woodsons-slaves-black-history-month-family-heal

This broadcast generated great public interest beginning with over 500,000 downloads of the story the first day it aired. In the next several months Black and white Woodsons began contacting Craig wanting to know more and even begin organizing an anti-racist Woodson family coalition. Since July 2023 these groups have been meeting regularly to collectively reckon with not only the white Woodson history of enslaving Black Woodsons, but also the damage that white Woodsons did to the Native population around Jamestown, specifically, the Pamunkey and Powhatan Confederacies. This work began with acknowledgement of the enslaving history and included learning how to repair the harms that white Woodson ancestors inflicted upon Black Woodson ancestors and Indigenous people. The Woodson family hopes to help provide a model for other American families who need a similar reckoning.