Gourd Instrument Making
Nasons, VA
Dena Jennings is a physician and artist in Central Virginia. She was born in Akron, Ohio during its booming years of ingenuity as the rubber capital of the world. Her father was an executive at Goodyear International; her mother, a banker at a hometown savings and loan. On her mother’s side, Jennings can trace her ancestry in Appalachia back five generations. Twenty years after establishing her medical practice and ImaniWorks, a non-profit organization for conflict transformation and human rights advocacy, Jennings moved to Ontario, Canada, where she entered a four-year arts apprenticeship. There, she learned to hand carve modern instruments made from gourds and other natural fibers in the style of traditional instruments from around the world. At the end of her apprenticeship, she opened a workshop, studio, and retail music store in a small town in Central Ontario.
Upon meeting her husband—who had developed an herb farm and retreat center in Central Virginia—she relocated her workshop and practice in Orange. Today she grows her gourds on the farm and through ImaniWorks, Jennings hosts instrument building workshops, conflict transformation retreats, and the Affrolachian On-Time Music Gathering at the farm. She also makes sculptures and performs Appalachian and folk Bengali music on gourd instruments. Jennings is previously served as a commissioner and vice char for the Virginia Commission for the Arts. In 2023, she apprenticed Samaria Marley in gourd banjo building with support from the Virginia Folkilfe Program. As she explains, she “endeavors to build the Beloved Community through my devotion to music, culture, and social justice.”