James “Bau” Graves

HARPSWELL – With great sadness we share the news that James “Bau” Graves passed away on Sept. 24, 2025, in Harpswell. He lived a vibrant, creative, and musical life, full of love and worldwide adventure, and left for his next journey, peacefully and painlessly, surrounded by his loved ones – just as he wanted.

Bau moved to Maine in 1976 and opened Welcome Home Music in Brunswick, selling instruments and offering a gathering space for professional and aspiring musicians. At the same time, he was presenting small concerts and, as the western world was shifting from disco to late punk, he and his friends were organizing and touring bands such as The Blue Sky Serenaders, The Neverly Brothers, and The Howitzers, a 36-member mandolin ensemble.

In 1987, as the new artistic director of The Maine Festival in Brunswick, Bau and the festival’s director, his wife Phyllis O’Neill, expanded the young event from a showcase for Maine performers, to a nationally recognized celebration presenting artists from across America and the world at large. After a move to Portland, Maine, the couple created the multi-venue New Year’s Portland Festival, followed by a year-round series of performances called Big Sounds From All Over and ultimately, raised the funds to purchase and renovate an old dry-cleaning shop in Portland’s prominent Longfellow Square, creating the Center for Cultural Exchange (CCE).

Whenever Bau Graves walked onto the stage before a performance, his enthusiasm was intoxicating. Whether a soukous band from the Republic of Congo, the Kronos Quartet from California, The Five Blind Boys from Alabama or a commision called “Fly Fishers and Fiddlers”, featuring ace fisherman and fiddlers, performing in the middle of an urban park’s pond, Bau’s pure delight let audiences know that they were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

Along the way Bau and Phyllis championed traditional and experimental performers, commissioning new work that bridged cultures and disciplines. Bau offered a vision of the performing arts that intentionally recognized and blurred boundaries, embracing the brilliance of various musical genres from Old-Timey String Bands to Afro-Futurism. As the couple enlarged their scope and commitment to cultural democracy, Portland’s demographics saw shifts in its population reflecting the surge of immigrants from Asia, Africa, Central and South America. In response, Bau created the House Island Project to provide a voice at the table for the new communities to select and present artists from their home cultures. In total, when Graves and O’Neill left Portland, Bau had personally hired dozens of bands from the African continent, another dozen from Louisiana’s Cajun Zydeco community, fiddlers from around the globe, Mongolian throat singers, countless American blues singers, tap dancers, monologists, world-renowned jazz performers, and hundreds of Maine artists. From a national tour called Accordions that Shook the World to Ray Charles and his band, Tony Bennett to k.d.lang, Graves booked the unknown and the hugely popular, equally embracing each of them.

Thousands of audience members in Maine took this journey with Bau. As news of Bau’s death spread in the past week, many recalled, in minute detail, concerts they’d attended decades ago.

In 2008 Bau and his family moved to Chicago, where Bau was hired as the new Executive Director of The Old Town School of Folk Music (OTS), the largest community school of music in the United States, where he served for over a decade. OTS, with an enrollment of 6,600 students, presented hundreds of concerts and the annual Square Roots Festival with 85,000 attending each summer. And with major funding from private foundations and government grant dollars, he initiated ongoing outreach programs in the racially diverse and challenging neighborhoods of Chicago’s Southside.

Bau held a Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology from Tufts University, published essays in both academic journals and the popular press, and appeared on and produced numerous recordings. His book “Cultural Democracy” was published in 2005 by the University of Illinois Press, the essay “Why Public Culture Fails at Diversity” appeared in the Handbook of Community Music in 2016 from Oxford University Press, and “Bau’s 101 Arrangements for Mandolins” in 2024.

He retired and returned to Maine seven years ago to write, play music, and continue to work and raise money for the causes he championed.

There was always music, and writing, and production, however the biggest love of his life was his family.
This generous, joyous, singular man is survived by his wife Phyllis O’Neill, daughter Hannah Kailer and her three children, Guthrie Graves and his wife Monica Choo, and siblings Adrienne Southgate and John Graves.

Bau had a profound effect on so many who knew him. We will remember him for the way he inspired us, for the important work he accomplished, and for the mischievous joy he took in playing the accordion on stage.