Dr. Dom Flemons — widely celebrated as “The American Songster” — is a GRAMMY Award winner with four nominations, a two-time EMMY nominee, an International Acoustic Music Award Grand Prize winner, and a United States Artists Fellow. A multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, actor, historian, and scholar, he is known for his unmatched command of more than a century of American roots traditions, spanning country, folk, bluegrass, Americana, and the blues. Flemons, based in the Chicago area, is also the creator and host of American Songster Radio Show on WSM in Nashville and an expert player of banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, quills, fife, percussion, and rhythm bones. He is the co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the founder of American Songster Productions, and currently serves on the boards of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize, Folk Alliance International, the Music Maker Relief Foundation, and the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Recording Academy.

Carrying forward the legacy of the early traveling songsters, Flemons brings a 21st-century voice to a tradition rooted in the contributions of Black musicians and the expansive landscape of American vernacular music. With a near-encyclopedic knowledge of folk history and an easygoing presence that belies the depth of his expertise, he has become one of today’s leading advocates for the preservation and celebration of Black and folk music traditions—reviving, reinterpreting, and keeping them vibrantly alive for modern audiences.