Brandi Waller-Pace (they/she) is a Fort Worth-based musician, educator, and scholar-activist. They are the Founder and Executive Director of Decolonizing the Music Room, a nonprofit with a mission of centering Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices in music education, research, and performance. Brandi is the Founder and Organizer of the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival, created to highlight blackness in American roots music.

Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, Brandi attended Howard University in Washington, DC. earning a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in Jazz Studies. At Howard they were a member of the critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble Afro Blue, sharing the stage with jazz greats Geri Allen, Carmen Lundy, Andy Bey, Jimmy Cobb, Nnenna Freelon, and Bobby McFerrin. Brandi then relocated to Fort Worth, TX, where they began teaching public school music and working as an artist-in-residence at Arts Fifth Avenue performing, teaching private music lessons, and teaching jazz choir through the nonprofit's Summer Playhouse camps for children.

During a 12 year tenure as a grade school music educator, she co-wrote music curriculum for the Fort Worth Independent School District and participated in district and community racial and systemic equity work. In 2019 and 2020, Brandi served on the Texas African American Studies Course Curriculum Advisory Team, which helped formulate curriculum standards for Texas’ first state-approved African American Studies course.

A singer and multi-instrumentalist, Brandi incorporates their proficiency on piano, banjo, guitar, and 'ukulele into their performances. After years of performing primarily jazz, neo-soul, and genre-crossing originals Brandi found the banjo and American roots music, opening a deep connection to traditions of her ancestors. Some of Brandi’s notable performances have been with ArtsGoggle, the City of Fort Worth’s Jazz Series and Juneteenth Celebration, the Affrolachian On-Time Gathering, The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Fort Worth Django Reinhardt Festival. She penned the song “You Are” that is featured on Nicholas Ryan Gant’s Promises and Introducing Nicholas Ryan Gant, lent backing vocals to the track “Once Their Was No Sun” on Jake Blount’s The New Faith, and has shared the stage with singer/songwriter Kaia Kater, with whom she formed the duo Sable Sisters. They have co-produced and curated artist lineups for events with Bluegrass Pride; The Bluegrass Situation; and PineCone, the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music.

Brandi also works as consultant, presenter, and speaker on topics including decolonizing and antiracist philosophies, jazz and the centrality of Blackness in American roots music, culturally relevant practices, organizational equity practices, and curriculum development. Her research and scholarship focuses on antiracism, decolonization, Black feminist thought, and Afrofuturism. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Orff Echo, The Illinois Music Educator Journal, Music Education Journal, The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education, The Bluegrass Situation and the Decolonizing the Music Room site.