Martha Redbone and band will explore the roots of North American music at the Sheldon

Martha Redbone traces the history of American music through her own family tree.

The musician, storyteller and theater-maker was born in Kentucky coal country to an African American father and a mother with roots among the Cherokee and Choctaw people.

After she started her career in the aughts playing funky R&B music, Redbone and her husband, Aaron Whitby — a London-raised musician — started weaving together bits of their cultural inheritance into a music group that synthesized many strands of North American folk music. They were commissioned in 2020 to write work for the first round of the North American Indigenous Songbook, an ongoing effort to support Native songwriters.

Redbone and Whitby also won a 2020 Drama Desk award for writing original music for a well-received revival of Ntozake Shange's “For Colored Girls…” that went to Broadway two years later. They’re now collaborating on the original theater piece “Black Mountain Women,” based on the stories of four generations of Cherokee women in Redbone’s family.

The Martha Redbone Roots Project plays the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries on Friday.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy Goodwin spoke with Redbone about some of her many musical influences.

Jeremy D. Goodwin: Rather than me trying to describe you and using a bunch of hyphens, how do you describe the music that you play?

Martha Redbone: American roots music. Because it embodies the foundation of American music, which stems from, you know, the blues and Native American traditional music and southeastern influences — and the combination of this music that came from all the people who came to this country and brought all the music from their homeland. Being from Harlan County, Kentucky — coal country — we had everybody there, from every nationality, and just a plethora of styles of music in those hills. And I think that the reflection of that is probably really deep in my bones.

Goodwin: Your earliest records like “Skintalk” in 2004 are much more recognizable as funky, soul music. Was there a moment when you decided to more overtly plumb the history of Native American and Black American folk styles?

Redbone: Yes. I think that what inspired me to make this American roots project was the fact that my partner, Aaron Whitby, and I became parents. So immediately, you want your children to know who they are and where they come from, and their grandparents and their great-grandparents and the culture. Some people do it through food. Some people do it through language or through any other art form. As musicians, we decided to honor our family through song.

The elders in our family were passing away pretty frequently and we realized the importance, that these stories go when our elders leave us. So it's really important to share those stories and talk to our elders about things that happened way before we were born. That's how you get all the good stuff. The best stories are usually around the kitchen table.

We made the record really for the family. We didn't really expect that we would have the success, as independent artists, that we ended up having with this music, and because at the time, there weren't very many groups that were making this kind of roots music.

Will Maupin

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The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries

Goodwin: Is there a lot of music at Redbone family gatherings?

Redbone: Always. All kinds. We have the blues — my grandpa loved the blues — and we have gospel music from the church. We have folk music that you hear literally after supper, especially in the spring and summer times. You'll hear it all throughout the town in Kentucky.

Goodwin: Your first recording project as Martha Redbone Roots Project is “The Garden of Love,” whose lyrics are all from the English poet William Blake. So much of what you do is so personal, coming out of your own history or the history of your family. So what’s William Blake got to do with it?

Redbone: Well, my partner, Aaron, is a Brit, so let's start there. He's a Londoner. He was born and raised in the same area that William Blake used to walk around. And we're both William Blake fans. We love the poetry. We studied it in school. I had it in middle school and again in high school and then I thought I was done with that. And then, lo and behold, in college, there he goes again! And I thought, you know what, if I had to do it three times [I may as well use his words in my music].

Goodwin: What should folks at the Sheldon expect Friday night?

Redbone: We’re going to take folks at the Sheldon to church. We're going to bring them to the mountaintop and have them hooting and hollering with church claps. I might even have them sing, because the music that we do is congregational. We're all just having a great time onstage. We take you to the mountaintop and then we send you back home all warm and fuzzy.