The music is the message for Martha Redbone. As a performer, vocalist, songwriter, and educator Redbone was introduced to music at an early age. Between being born in New York City, and growing up in Black Mountain, Kentucky, there was always an exposure to culture, identity, and pride despite the ever changing times and landscape. The constant was, and still is music. Today, her work is a blend of that very foundation. From folk to blues to gospel, Redbone’s myriad influences are evident as the multi-disciplinary artist composes for projects such as the 2019 revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow was enuf at the Public Theater or the Civilian’s 2024 production of Sex Variants or even her own 2004 album, Skintalk.
Redbone is on a mission to push past the erasure that so many marginalized people experience by unapologetically owning her complexities. Even her name, Martha Redbone is an acknowledgment of her own Afro-Indigenous roots, and felt it was “a great way to honor truth.” To those who would try to put her in a box, she says, “American history is embracing truth—not diminishing your Blackness or diminishing anything else in your culture.” Redbone’s work is an exemplary celebration of her Black and Indigenous roots. All of her work rings with power and a call to action daring us remember who we are–and who we were.
While she’s primarily known as a musician, she continues to push past erasure through medium, too. She sees theater as an extension of her artistic expression, explaining, “When you’re doing storytelling, you need more than just like the 2 ½ minute song. We wanted a wider platform to tell a story and create moods. The radio doesn’t have time for moods… but theater allows for a bed to be made.” The story in theater creates a play and all its elements make for a beautiful bed with layers.
As a Tow Foundation Fellow with the Civilians, Redbone continues to make theater with a project in development titled, Conversations (a working title). Conversations is a music theater project based on the stories of Indigenous elders in her life. The work-in-progress is a compilation of interviews with Indigenous elders about their personal histories and what their identity means to them. The elders are from three different Native nations, and three different walks of life. Redbone is taking their interviews and placing them into songs. In her words:
“I want to de-objectify Native people, remind people that we are all human beings. I’m sick of the objectification of all of us… I’m trying to remove stereotypes. I want these elders to talk about their lives, about their childhood, about coming-of-age, about being an elder, about what they think about the things that are going on today. [I want to hear from them] just as people. Once people get to be a certain age, people stop listening to them. They’re more representatives than actually hearing who they are. [So for the project] it’ll be people in their sixties and seventies—male, female, gay, straight, non-binary, grandma, single, never married, and who have sex! This is what I’m excited about.”
This is Redbone’s first play on her own and it couldn’t be any more fitting given it pays tribute to her roots through compiling a rich tapestry of elder voices at a time when people are seeking connection more than ever. And that isn’t the end of her music theater projects. She also has an upcoming piece at The Apollo’s Works in Process series this March titled, Guardian Spirit: The words of bell hooks. Guardian Spirit is co-created with Redbone’s longtime collaborator (and husband), Aaron Whitby. The upcoming project will focus on hooks’ poems, prose, and essays while set to original music. The project feels kismet given that Millennials and Gen Z are rediscovering hooks’ “love” trilogy. It’s also a particularly potent time to focus on a Black feminist writer and scholar, given that we’ve recently lost one of North Stars, Nikki Giovanni.
The synchronicities don’t end there as both Redbone and hooks are from Kentucky. And, like Redbone, hooks’ work focuses on love, family, and community. Neither heroine despairs in the labels, trappings, or distractions of today but they both call for us to think about what lessons from the past help us build up a better today and tomorrow.
There’s a real sense of Sankofa in Redbone’s work. She is constantly weaving the elders who came before us all into the work she creates for the future. But Redbone recognizes that the future, too, keeps on giving. When I asked about Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, she remarked, “It’s amazing. It’s a reclamation that these are our roots, too. And all of the [negative] responses are distractions. It does not erase that she is a Texas girl.”
As evidenced by her performances and projects, Redbone is a Kentuckian and a New Yorker, through and through. Even with her touring band, her commitment to her roots is evident, too. Together, they pay homage to the great music they all came up with. Of their shared musical taste, Redbone says, “We all know country music. We all know rock music. We all know blues. We all know folk. We all know soul music. We all know the funk. We all know R&B, and we all know hip-hop!” And even while art and activism can seem like serious work given her wide and studied musical legacy, Redbone still looks for fun in her collaborations telling me, “You gotta be fun. You gotta be kind. You gotta be smart. And a badass!”
That’s exactly how I would describe Martha Redbone, too. She’s gracious, fun, fearless, and an all-around badass looking to uplift the voices that are often mismanaged by history in attempts to help illuminate our future and remind us of our collective power. And while Redbone uses theater as a bed to help us understand our shared histories, her music, too, serves as tunes to empower us to reach for brighter futures.
Extended Play is a project of The Civilians. To learn more about The Civilians and to access exclusive discounts to shows, visit us and join our email list at TheCivilians.org.
