Topanga Banjo•Fiddle Contest is a music festival and competition, held annually at Paramount Ranch, a unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in Agoura Hills, California.
The first competition the "Banjo Pickers and Open Fiddling Contest", created jointly by Margot Slocum and Margaret Jean "Peg" Engwall Benepe,[2] was a music-only event held in 1961.
Twenty-six Five-String Banjo Pickers, five Fiddlers, four Judges and five hundred fans attended that first gathering amid the California Scrub Oak of the Santa Monica Mountains.
For the next eight years it was held on the grounds of the 1920s-era "Camp Wildwood" until a 1969 city ordinance forced a move to large venues.
Numerous stars and musicians have participated, including Jackson Browne, David Lindley, Taj Mahal, John Hartford, Byron Berline, Dan Crary, Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling, John Hickman, Stuart Duncan, Peter Tork and Steve Martin.