The Berkeley Old Time Music Convention is a five day music festival featuring a lovingly curated roster of local and national acts, with concert sets, rollicking square dances, workshops, jams and the illustrious

string band contest in venues throughout Berkeley

2022 ARTISTS

plus more to be added.....

WATCH THE 2021 BOTMC FREIGHT SHOWS!

What an amazing experience to have the BOTMC in person AND online in 2021! Many thanks to all who attended and performed and taught and lectured and especially HUGE THANKS to our volunteers, who made the whole thing possible.

Please consider making a donation to the BOTMC; click on the DONATE button for instructions.

Berkeley Old Time Music COnvention
ANti-Racism Statement

As appreciators and torch bearers of early American traditional music, the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention actively questions what it means to share this music in the context of systemic racism. We wish to acknowledge the immense contribution of Black and Indigenous musicians to the music presented by the BOTMC, in the past and in the present.  We acknowledge the forces that have historically denied these contributions and that worked to sever their living connections to this music. We also acknowledge our own complicity in this oppression. As we play this music, we are reckoning with our history and present condition. We hope to build a road toward reparation.

Adapted (with permission) from the Plaid Strangers (Thomas Angell, Maxine Gerber, Karen Heil and Allegra Yellin)