As a professional violin player performing and working with Americana roots, Yellow Springs native Anne Harris creates her art with an awareness that she is one of the few Black women in those spaces.
Amanda Ewing, a Nashville-based luthier, a crafter of stringed instruments, and also a Black woman, has had similar thoughts. When the two connected via Instagram last year, they realized they had the chance to undertake a unique collaboration.
Ewing is working to produce a violin for Harris — the first such instrument produced by a Black woman luthier for a Black woman fiddle player in recorded history. The two spoke with the News recently via Zoom.
Harris, a YSHS graduate who is now based in Chicago, said she began her musical journey at just 3 years old. She explained the inspiration she found in Yellow Springs.
“I really credit Yellow Springs with my development. Art is part of the culture there,” she said.
She told the News that her surroundings growing up were very musical, which “created this really vibrant, fertile” foundation for her to begin her career. She does not remember a time when she did not want to make music.
Harris credited locals Shirley Mullins and Mary Schumacher as a fortifying female presence for nourishing her exposure to music.
“I find it fascinating that the people who were feeding my musical foundation were women,” she said.
Fueled by this inspiration and artistry throughout her career, Harris has recorded and produced six albums, worked with artists such as Otis Taylor and Guy Davis, toured for 12 years with her own band and starred in the film “The Musician.” She described her musical journey as a “calling that is directive of the path [she is] walking.”
Along this path, however, Harris has only ever owned one violin — the one her parents bought her as a child.
“It’s grown with me — and I with it — over the years, weaving countless melodies and songs throughout the world,” Harris said in a YouTube video announcing her collaboration with Ewing. “I love it with my whole heart, but for the last couple of years, I’ve been considering how I might expand my sound with a new instrument.”
That expansion led Harris to Ewing, who began apprenticing as a luthier after leaving a 16-year corporate work career.
