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The Garden of Love: Martha Redbone's Eternal Expression of Love
by Kandia Crazy Horse

The Garden Of Love – The Songs of William Blake is not the debut album of singer/songwriter/producer/artist Martha Redbone, yet it embodies a sonic rebirth and fuller flowering of her own rootsy ethos. Warm, woodsy melodies take flight through the fusion of largely prewar string-band instrumentation and her heart-worn mountain holler, as Sister Martha tells tales of eternal humanitarian values distilled in the Southland since before America was founded.

Miss Redbone’s music flows equally from her own unique, award-winning blend of Native American elements with funk and her deep roots in Appalachian folk and Piedmont blues favored by the matriarchy that raised her on a rich sojourn from Clinch Mountain, Virginia to Harlan County, Kentucky and beyond to Brooklyn’s Dodge City-esque mean streets. Indeed, Garden Of Love seamlessly evokes the mid-20th century old timey gold rush when such artists as her fellow Kentuckians Jim Ford and Jackie DeShannon fearlessly infused their downhome blues between canyon air ballets and retronuevo cabinessence – before their followers developed newgrass and Redbone’s twangy forebears Buffy Sainte-Marie and Rita Coolidge brought Indigenous concerns to the rock & roll arena in the 1970s. Yet don’t call this project bluegrass or the purists might have a fit.

Redbone, since the establishment of her career in London and New York City, has humbly and steadfastly earned a solid reputation as a sought-after collaborator – whether in the guise of Warner Chappell-minted songwriter, behind the console guide or earnest guest voice -- amongst her peers. Working with rising comers like Brit Grammy winner Shola Ama or such legends as Redbone’s Ohio Players/P-Funk mentor Walter “Junie” Morrison, she and UK-bred partner Aaron Whitby consistently provide essential direction and soulful support to knit track and artist into an indelible whole.

Thus it may come as a surprise to some that Redbone, noted for purveying the wilder shores of rhythm & blues on prior releases Home Of the Brave and Skintalk, recorded her new album in the fabled center of country music, Nashville. Yet, proudly retracing the path of her uniquely American mixed heritage back to its earliest source, she is merely taking the inevitable next step of a maverick artist who has never been chained by borders. Americana is her natural homecoming, sonic and otherwise.

The album, produced by Grammy-winning Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder John McEuen whose recent work includes Steve Martin’s “The Crow”, drafts in a stellar supporting cast that allowed Martha to focus on vocals and deep communion with the spirits of her ancestors, composer David Amram, Seminole elder Lonnie Harrington, and studio veterans Byron House on upright bass and Mark Casstevens on guitar. Reverence and righteous joy from sacred music animate songs like the title track “The Garden of Love”, the glorious “I Rose Up at Dawn of Day,” and haunting “A Dream,” alongside lyrical content from the brilliant mind of Romantic visionary William Blake whose credo ‘Energy is Eternal Delight’ is fiercely reinterpreted for Appalachia. The album resonates with the influence of Redbone’s southeastern raisin’, echoing an earlier time/space through elements of folk, country gospel, stomp chants, and the high lonesome of a front porch Sunday pickin’.

The couple crafted Garden of Love between touring, producing albums at their Brooklyn studio, an ongoing foray into banjo mastery, activism, and the never-ending daily joys of raising a young son during 2011; but the album attains the heights of an imperishable artifact, due to the acute losses of her mother, aunt and other trials amidst the writing and recording process. And so, for a concept that gestated over five years, the album is still right on time – as revision of the artist’s complex American heritage, as loving messages to her child heir to these roots, and a balm for audiences hungering for truth and higher meaning in these turbulent days of 2012.

In the arc of Martha Redbone’s aesthetic journey, Garden Of Love represents the simultaneous retrenchment and innovation so respected in those seminal works of fellow Cosmic Americana pioneers The Byrds via Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Band on their first two long-players, and it deserves to enter that oh-so hallowed high-tech holler. This here is thoroughly modern music but imbued with rural truth and a slowed roll that has provided sustenance to plainfolks since time immemorial. C’mon, brothers and sisters, and get yourselves back to some semblance of The Garden.

Cultural Preservation and Mentorship Through Music

Alongside her career as a recording artist and songwriter Martha Redbone has maintained a steady involvement with causes she believes in utilizing her celebrity in Indian Country for fundraising and leadership.

Ms. Redbone holds an annual Traditional Music Workshop within the United Houma Nation’s Cultural Enrichment Summer Camp program teaching grade school age children the music from her Choctaw and Cherokee heritage as well as incorporating the tribe’s own Houma-French language.

Houma Camp

Martha has given talks on subjects ranging from Indigenous rights to the role of arts in politics at many institutions including New York University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and on Native Identity during the Native Theater Festival at the Public Theater in NYC. Her album “Skintalk” is part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian as an example of contemporary Native American music. She is featured in NMAI’s current exhibit “Up Where We Belong- Native Americans in Popular Culture”.

Ms. Redbone has also held workshops and given motivational talks with many grade school children throughout her touring on reservations at Red Lake, MN, Cherokee, NC, Yuma AZ and Menominee WI, to name a few.

Having served as an exemplary ambassador to Native and African-American Youth for the National HIV/Aids Partnership, which also included dedicating several morning TV appearances to the cause, Martha was awarded the Red Ribbon Award for Outstanding Leadership presented on World AIDS Day at the United Nations in 2005.

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the communities of the United Houma Nation on the Gulf Coast, Martha single-handedly helped generate publicity that raised over $30,000. This included dedicating radio and television appearances in Europe and the US to raise awareness about the needs of the forgotten tribes on the Gulf Coast. Redbone also performed with Bonnie Raitt and actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman, which helped raise over $130,000 in scholarships for the Clyde Bellecourt Scholarship Fund where 12 outstanding Native American students who have overcome adversity receive full tuition to study in higher education. Ms. Redbone also helped organize and performed for the private benefit fundraiser that included many politicians and local businessmen of Minneapolis, MN.

Chairman Floyd Jourdain of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians invited Ms. Redbone to perform for the children of Red Lake as part of a motivational back to school program post the tragic shootings that occurred the previous school year. 100 “Skintalk” albums were donated to the Red Lake Tribal youth council.

Currently Martha is the indigenous affairs consultant and creative advisor to the Man Up Campaign, the new global youth movement to eradicate violence against women and girls. She is particularly proud of her accomplishment in having the Campaign’s Board of Directors decide to include an Indigenous North American contingent (independent of the USA or Canada) to the roll call of 50 countries taking part in their Youth Leadership Summit held at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

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