CONVERSATIONS (WORKING TITLE)
This music theatre project will be created from extensive interviews with multigenerational Indigenous and Native American figures in diverse nations and communities across the country. Martha is dedicated to telling the authentic stories and experiences of communities most harmed by systemic inequities, appropriation, and colonialism.
Martha Redbone vocalist/songwriter/composer/educator and one of today’s most vital voices in American Roots music. She is known for her unique 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 Southeastern Cherokee/Choctaw culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music with songs and storytelling that share her life experience as an Indigenous Black woman and mother in the new millennium. Redbone, along with longtime collaborator Aaron Whitby are the Composers of original music and score, arrangers and orchestrators of 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, premiered at the Booth Theater and garnered 7 Tony award nominations.