Martha Redbone "Bone Hill: The Concert"

Martha Redbone is a Native & African-American vocalist/songwriter/composer/educator. 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 pregentrified Brooklyn. Bone Hill is a song cycle inspired by Redbone's life and the women she descended from.

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 a Native and Black woman and mother in the new millennium, Redbone gives voice to issues of social justice, bridging traditions from past to present, connecting cultures, and celebrating the human spirit. 

About Bone Hill: The Concert

Bone Hill is a new musical work for theater created and developed by librettist/composers Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby at Joe’s Pub and the Public Theater. In its current song cycle iteration, Redbone becomes the characters from four generations of a family in the hills of coal-mining Appalachia, and the musicians are the townsfolk. In telling their stories the audience is taken on an epic, unexpected American exploration of family, history, and cultural identity. Inspired by her own life and the women Martha Redbone is descended from, the lives of the Bone family members are told in songs that span a swathe of American music telling a parallel history. From traditional Cherokee chants and lullabies to Bluegrass, Blues, Country, Gospel, Jazz, Rock & Roll, Rhythm n Blues.  

Dark and violent at times, Bone Hill is uncompromising in its desire to be honest about uncomfortable subjects particularly colonization and race. The piece addresses issues and stories rarely heard in musical theater- The plight of the Cherokee people who returned home after the Trail of Tears, the US government’s racial reclassification legislatures of the Mid-Atlantic states, the American Indian and African-American interracial dynamic and the ancient burial mounds on the Eastern seaboard, land which was desecrated for coal and the building of new mining towns during the early 1800s. Beyond reflecting the cultural and aesthetic diversity of today’s theater, Bone Hill adds diverse missing narratives– racial dynamics between Native and African Americans, Native American and European, stories from the perspective of the women and the lives of people of color living in Appalachia, their culture and music. It reveals erased, forgotten truths and it does so with humor, pathos and exuberance.  

"You Caught My Eye" is a song selection from the piece recorded live at the original workshop commissioned by at Joe’s Pub and The Public Theater’s NY Voices artist initiative. A waltz describing the day Redbone’s grandfather, a sharecropper from Mississippi, migrated to Kentucky to work in the coalmines and met her Cherokee grandmother. Redbone and Whitby are currently engaged in residencies to develop their full theatrical vision, and perform some work-in-progress workshop readings during this process. 

Created by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby. Music and lyrics by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby. Bone Hill is commissioned by Joe's Pub and The Publie Theater as part of the New York Voices artists' initiative; co-commissioned by the Lincoln Center David Rubinstein Atrium. Bone Hill is the recipient of the NEFA National Theater Project, an NPN Creation and Touring grant and Redbone is a 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellow. Redbone and Bone Hill are represented by Northstar Artists.

ENSEMBLE

Martha Redbone- Storyteller

Aaron Whitby- Music Director/Piano/Organ/Storyteller/Mr. Whitaker

Charlie Burnham- Violin/Storyteller/Tibby

Fred Cash- Bass/Storyteller

Alan ‘AB’ Burroughs- Guitars/Banjo/Storyteller

Kevin Johnson- Drums/Storyteller