Martha Redbone

Martha Redbone is a vocalist/songwriter/composer/educator. She is known for her music gumbo of folk, blues and gospel from her childhood in Harlan County, Kentucky infused with the eclectic grit of pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Inheriting the powerful vocal range of her gospel-singing African American father and the resilient spirit of her mother’s Cherokee/Choctaw culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music. With songs and storytelling that share her life experience as an Afro- Indigenous woman and mother navigating in the new millennium, Redbone gives voice to issues of social justice, connecting cultures, celebrating the human spirit. Her latest album “The Garden of Love-Songs of William Blake” is “a brilliant collision of cultures” (New Yorker). Redbone’s recordings, commissions, touring and cultural preservation workshops are a partnership she shares with longtime collaborator/husband Aaron Whitby. Their recent works and song contributions include “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuff”- Public Theater, NY, premiering on Broadway April 2022, Bone Hill:The Concert, “Stars”- NY Theater Workshop- Jim Nicola, “Primer for a Failed Superpower”- Rachel Chavkin, “Black Mountain Women”, Les Waters in development at The Public Theater, The Talking Circles, the Artistic Instigators series at the New York Theater Workshop. Awards include NEFA, NPN, NACF, MAPfund, Creative Capital, United States Artist Fellow.