Program Book
The Moss Center Presents
Martha Redbone Roots Project
Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 8:00 PM
The Martha Redbone Roots Project:
- Martha Redbone - Vocals, percussion
- Aaron Whitby – Piano
- Charlie Burnham – Violin
- Fred Cash, Jr. – Bass
The Martha Redbone Roots Project is “a brilliant collision of cultures.” --The New Yorker
Ms. Redbone and her ensemble of masterful musicians take their audiences on a historical music journey through times past and present. Weaving the sounds of her childhood and her ancestral homelands in Black Mountain, KY, she celebrates the music of her multi-cultural Southeastern heritage. Her music conjures up stories from the early days of the mountain, embodying the folk, blues and gospel sounds from the ancestors of the Black migration with the Indigenous foundation of the region. Redbone and her band invite you their home through sound and story.
Program
To make this show unique, Martha and her band will be playing songs based on the energy of the crowd. Get ready for a one-of-a-kind experience!
Artist Bio
Martha Redbone is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, music educator, and 2021 United States Artist Fellow. Celebrated for her tasty gumbo of roots music she embodies 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 nickname and powerful voice from her gospel-singing father and the resilient spirit of her mother’s Southeastern Indigenous culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music with songs and storytelling.
Sharing her life experience as an Afro-Indigenous woman and mother in the 21st century Redbone also works in partnership with longtime collaborator/husband Aaron Whitby. Together, their music gives voice to issues of social justice, connecting cultures and celebrating the human spirit. Redbone’s 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…”(The 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. The play premiered at the Booth Theater, garnering seven Tony Award nominations and critical acclaim. Redbone and Whitby are also the 2020 Drama Desk Award recipients for Outstanding Music in a Play and the 2020 Audelco Award recipients for Outstanding Composer of Original Music and Score for the Off-Broadway revival.