Gourd Instrument Making
Brandywine, MD
Samaria Marley is a mother, musician, a farmer, and an herbalist. Born in Texas, and raised in Massachusetts, her family can trace their maternal roots to Virginia and Kentucky, which perhaps explains why Samaria was drawn to play and perform Afro- folk music with VeVe & Tha Rebels in Washington, DC. Samaria is the co-founder of the DC Mutual Aid Apothecary and together with her family, she farms Juniper’s Garden. In 2023, Samaria completed a Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship with Dena Jennings in gourd string instrument building. After completing her first gourd banjo, she has started building a fiddle for her daughter, hoping, as she says, “that someone in my family down the line will be playing this instrument and think, ‘My great-grandmother made this—that it can have that longevity.”