Martha Redbone, May 9 through 13

Public Concert: Saturday, May 13, 7:30 p.m.

The Redstone Room, 129 Main Street, Davenport IA

PASS Concert: Wednesday, May 10, 6 p.m.

Co-presented by Living Lands & Waters

Abbreviated Concerts: Tuesday, May 9, and Thursday, May 11

Various Area Locales

With The New Yorker calling her most recent album "a brilliant collision of cultures," Native American and African-American vocalist/songwriter Martha Redbone performs locally from May 9 through 13 as the final guest in Quad City Arts' 2022-23 Visiting Artists season, the genre-hopping talent 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.

Boasting Choctaw, Eastern Cherokee, and African-American ancestry, Redbone was born in 1966 in New York City, and spent time during her childhood with her maternal grandparents in Black Mountain, Kentucky. At a young age, Redbone became a musician and singer, combining varied music styles with Black American and Native American roots music. She was mentored by Junie Morrison of the Ohio Players and Parliament Funkadelic, where she honed her skills as a professional songwriter and producer. Since bursting onto the scene at the 2002 Native American Music Awards for her debut album Home of the Brave, she has earned a reputation as a collaborator, performer, educator, and mentor across native North America and occasionally abroad.

In early 2007, Redbone's second recording Skintalk won the 6th Annual Independent Music Award for Best R&B Album, with that hit followed by Future Street in 2006. Her 2012 recording The Garden of Love – Songs of William Blake sets Blake's poetry to music that draws from rural influences of Appalachia: English folk, African American, and Native American traditions. With her songs and storytelling sharing 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. Beyond her solo career, the artist also tours nationally with the Martha Redbone Roots Project, and the New York Times stated her voice holds “both the taut determination of mountain music and the bite of American Indian singing."

Martha Redbone's full-length concert concluding her tenure as a Quad City Arts Visiting Artist will be held at Davenport's Redstone Room on May 13, with admission to the 7:30 p.m. engagement $10-15, and her PASS concert will be delivered in a "Party on the River" event co-presented by Living Lands & Waters ($50 admission, location TBA) at 6 p.m. on May 10. Redbone will also perform three abbreviated concert events that are free and open to the public: at the Moline Public Library (3210 41st Street) on May 9 at noon; at Moline's Butterworth Center (1105 Eighth Street) on May 9 at 7 p.m.; and at Muscatine's Wesley United Methodist Church (400 Iowa Avenue) on May 11 at 2:30 p.m.
For more information on Martha Redbone's area appearances and the Visiting Artists series, call (309)793-1213 and visit QuadCityArts.com.