Martha Redbone, a black and indigenous Kentucky-hailing folk artist, walks up the stairs of the Morrison Music building on an unusually warm February afternoon. Sunlight streams through the windows as we gathered for a songwriting workshop hosted by the Berkeley Arts Research Center.
The workshop starts with a song about how angels make their hope here in these hills—a poem written by Bell Hooks. Martha and Aaron Wrigby, her music and life partner for the last 31 years, have been tasked by Bell Hook’s family to put some of the poet’s work to song.
Martha says that her songwriting process is usually conducted while dreaming, doing the dishes, or sautéing an onion in a pan. A melody forms as she mouths the words of a poem, again and again. Playing with how the words feel on her tongue—making the common bizarre. All concepts in relation to art she describes as processes of play. We practice playing together, throwing lists of words on a board, seeing how they want to relate, and line them up. A story emerges: a tennis ball, a piano, a spindrift, twirling towards the ground.
She extolls the idea that each person’s voice is unique and is built from our experiences and the stories of our ancestors. To become a musician is to learn how to be unimaginably one’s self, to find and create moments of play, and to practice believing in what one is saying. She says that having to live with one’s self is the ultimate goal of any artist. She tells us all artists have to hold what it is to never be enough, because what’s going on in your head and what you’re able to produce are always going to be two different things.
The act of making music is the act of taking time. Martha and Aaron discuss that the space between is as important as the words themselves. The weight between words is one of the most crucial parts of the music-making process. Aaron describes from behind the piano, “It is that pause that brings the listener in. It’s the break that holds our attention to what comes next.” I ask about how many words you can throw into a line. She sings her answer. It’s a rendition of “Do I Do” by Stevie Wonder? She says that Stevie Wonder loves to throw extra honey butter, honey butter sugar, and kisses into each line that he plays. Just trying to fit all the words into that little bit of time.
Martha leaves us with one last piece of advice: “Life is about taking risks.” She describes, “You either win or you learn.”. Martha has spent so much of her life learning. She says that no one on this planet feels like what they have done cannot be worked on, and that to her, life is the constant process of learning to be satisfied with oneself.
Words and artwork by Christopher LeBoa
