by Stephanie Manning
Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory
“If it’s meant to happen, the music will find you.” That’s how Martha Redbone sees it. And it wasn’t until she was in college studying illustration in the late ’80s, that the music found her for good.
Back then, the advent of the first Mac was rapidly changing the art world. “As an illustrator who loved painting and drawing people, that digital world was not for me,” she said. Feeling torn, she turned to music as a creative outlet, starting as a background vocalist before progressing into a career as a lead singer. Together with her songwriting partner (and later life partner) the pianist Aaron Whitby, she began to write music that had stories to tell.
“ There was a connection and a resonance that I got from singing, and it gave me a sense of peace,” she says. “I’ll always be an artist, I’ll always be an illustrator. But the music is what ended up calling me, and I just listened to that call.”
Today, through her group the Martha Redbone Roots Project, the vocalist performs and creates songs across a wide range of cultural genres.
“ We play gospel music, we play blues, ballads, mountain hollers, we sing poetry from William Blake — we do all kinds of things,” says Redbone, who was raised in rural Kentucky and New York City. She and Whitby, together with violinist Charlie Burnham and bassist Fred Cash, Jr., will bring this cross-disciplinary performance to Oberlin on April 6 as part of the Artist Recital Series.
Redbone’s Sunday night concert in Finney Chapel will be the second part of her Oberlin residency this academic year. In October, she visited the school to host a career talk and a number of musical workshops, which were made possible by the Ed Helms American Roots Residency Fund. This visit marked her first time in Oberlin, “but my goodness, it won’t be my last,” she says. The students “ seemed really happy with the curriculum and excited about the things that are going on.”
She especially praises the American Roots Residency program, which provides opportunities for Oberlin students to engage with bluegrass, roots, and Americana music. “ Given the history of the school, I think it’s a really powerful way to preserve American history through music,” she says.
Keeping these regional styles of music alive is important to her, thanks to her childhood in Kentucky and her family connections throughout Appalachia. “There’s so many different cultures in that area, and this long history, but at the same time, there’s been this kind of one-note narrative” about the region, she says. “I feel it’s my responsibility to share the culture through my eyes — as a person of color, a person with indigenous roots and African American roots.”
Redbone has been spending a lot of time thinking about colleges recently. Her son will be starting the application process soon, and she’s encouraging him to put his passions first. “ The reality is, for undergrad, I think you really gotta do what you love,” she says.
Today, Redbone embraces her own passions by taking her music on tour, often performing in wildly different corners of the country. But certain things have remained consistent everywhere. “The people who invite us to share our music truly love what they do,” she says. “No matter where we are, we have been welcomed with so much love and kindness from arts presenters, faculty, and audiences.”
On stage, the Roots Project musicians make the effort to foster camaraderie between themselves and their listeners. “ We want people to sing along — we try to make it like church in an old country town,” Redbone says. “We don’t expect people to sit there in total silence. It’s just not what the music that we sing is for.”
Their audiences often share a sense of curiosity and openness, “especially in a place like Oberlin, where everyone in the surrounding area knows that this is a music haven. That’s really special, and that’s very different from some of the other places that we’ve played in.”
Ultimately, there’s one simple way to describe the listeners who will come out to Finney Chapel in April: “These are people who truly love live music.”
Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 24, 2025.
Click here for a printable copy of this article
