Martha Redbone

Martha Redbone is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, and educator of African American, Cherokee, and Choctaw descent. A multi-award-winning musician, the charismatic songstress is celebrated for her tasty gumbo of roots music embodying the folk and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky, mixed with the eclectic grit of her teenage years in pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Inheriting her powerful gospel-singing father’s voice and the resilient spirit of her mother’s Southeastern Indigenous culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music with songs and storytelling that share her life experience as a Black and Native American woman and

Her album The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake (produced by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder and Grammy-winner John McEuen), is “a brilliant collision of cultures” (New Yorker). Redbone and Whitby are the composers, arrangers, and orchestrators of original music and score for the 2022 Broadway revival of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuff, the 1976 classic choreopoem by the late Ntozake Shange, premiering at the Booth Theater, garnering seven Tony Award nominations and critical acclaim. Redbone and Whitby are the 2020 Drama Desk Award recipients for Outstanding Music in a Play and the 2020 Audelco Award recipient for Outstanding Composer of Original Music and Score for the Off-Broadway revival. Redbone is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow.

The Redbone and Whitby’s recent work is BONE HILL, an interdisciplinary musical theater work inspired by the lives of Redbone’s family in the hills of coal-mining Appalachia. A multi-racial Cherokee and African American family, they are permanently bonded to their culture, identity, and the mountain despite the region’s violent past and the ever-changing laws of the land that threaten to extinguish them. Commissioned by Joe’s Pub/NEA and Lincoln Center for the Arts, Bone Hill – The Concert is touring extensively nationwide and is a recipient of the NEFA National Theater Project Creation and Touring Grant and National Performance Network Creation Fund. (read more)

Reviews

New York Times (John Pareles)

"Martha Redbone's voice held both the taut determination of mountain music and the bite of American Indian singing." Read Review

Huffington Post (Dusty Wright)

“An organic, gorgeous feast for ears and minds.” Read Review

The New Yorker

"A brilliant collision of cultures." Read Review

NPR COVERAGE

Anastasia Tsioulcas covering globalFEST for NPR: "Redbone combines folk, Appalachian, soul and Native tradition in a group of settings of poetry by William Blake — a startling idea, perhaps, but one that brims with potency and freshness." Martha on All Things Considered | Martha on Tell Me More | Martha on All Songs Considered | Read Review

Village Voice

“Poised to be Americana's next superstar.” Village Voice globalFEST Review 2013 | Read Review

Martha Redbone

Intro

Video

Martha Redbone EPK

Tiny Desk Concert/globalFEST 2021

School Day Performance at Virginia Tech, 2019

Cellar Session at City Winery New York, 2017

"The Garden Of Love" Cellar Session at City Winery New York, 2017

"Caught My Eye" Cellar Session at City Winery New York, 2017

"I Rose Up At The Dawn Of Day" Cellar Session at City Winery New York, 2017

Audio

"How Sweet I Roamed"

"The Garden Of Love"

"Echoing Green"

FORMATS

Standard Performance

Other Options

OUTREACH

ITINERARY

PROMO ASSETS

Documents

Images

Audio MP3’s

Video MP4’s

Bone Hill: The Concert

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