A dark room is illuminated by a central spotlight. A woman dominates center stage, with her hands raised as she belts out a song. Men playing instruments surround her, and three vocalists join in her song. Projected on a large screen behind her are the words “i am wild.”
CLICK!
A soulful moment is captured.
This is the first time that I am writing about a photograph that I took myself. In late March 2025, I had the unreal opportunity to travel to New York City — on my birthday, no less — to see a performance that filled my soul. This picture hardly does it justice.
Basically on a whim, Margaret Prim, Gwenda Motley, and I planned a trip to see a preview of Martha Redbone’s show “Guardian Spirit.” Martha had reached out to Margaret with an invitation to see this work-in-progress. The two established a connection when Margaret booked Redbone and her band as her first Live! At the Alhambra show in 2013 after taking over at the Pennyroyal Arts Council. The group returned again to perform as the headliner for the community’s Big Read in 2022.
It was through this relationship with Margaret that Martha discovered Hopkinsville’s connection to author, feminist and cultural critic bell hooks — and she wanted to create something to celebrate the work of this icon. At a small black box theater connected to the famed Apollo, Martha, her husband, and six more talented musicians and vocalists shared the beginnings of a performance inspired by the poetry of bell hooks.
RELATED: Tickets available for Oct. 16 performance of “Guardian Spirit” in Hopkinsville
No. Not “inspired.” Martha and her team composed music to complement the words written by hooks in her book “Appalachian Elegy.” The music is inspired. The words come straight from bell hooks herself.
bell hooks published close to 40 books in her career. The first of these — “And There They Wept” — was a collection of poems that she self-published in 1978. In “Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood,” she writes that “poetry changes everything” for her. As a girl, she reads poetry, memorizes it, recites it. And she writes it, too. It gives her a way to express herself. She concludes chapter 44 with “she eases her pain in poetry, using it to make the poems live, using the poems to keep on living.”
In many ways, it is pain that led to the poems in “Appalachian Elegy.” Merriam-Webster defines “elegy” as “a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation.” Many of the poems in this book are lamenting a loss — the loss of a connection to the land on which we live and the consequential loss of our connection to ourselves.
The book begins with these words:
“Sublime silence surrounds me. I have walked to the top of the hill, plopped myself down to watch the world around me. I have no fear here, in this world of trees, weeds, and growing things. This is the world I was born into: a world of wild things. In it the wilderness in me speaks. I am wild.”
Our photograph comes from this passage, and it sets the stage for this entire performance. The poems turned into songs acknowledge a wildness found in nature and in the spirit that lives within each of us. hooks captures this with her words. Redbone sings life into these words — into this wildness — with her music and her voice.
The poetry in “Appalachian Elegy” and the songs in “Guardian Spirit” are about this place — right here where this performance will premiere. I admittedly had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that we are Appalachian. We’re not. Thankfully, hooks addresses this in the introduction by explaining that while Western Kentucky is not geographically in Appalachia, many of us — especially those from the country or backwoods (her words) — live by Appalachian values.
She plants the roots of these values in the need to be self-determining. She writes, “folks from the backwoods were certain about two things: that every human soul needed to be free and that the responsibility of being free required one to be a person of integrity …”
Now, if that doesn’t sound like my own grandfathers, then I don’t know what does.
RELATED: Read more about bell hooks in Hoptown Chronicle’s archives
I am struck by how much the words of a Black feminist writer remind me of them. They both grew up on farms, but they were not farmers as adults. They did, however, each have a garden that they tended with such care and pride that you could taste it in their tomatoes. They felt this deep reverence for the land that provided for them. A reverence that gave them a deeply rooted sense of place and belonging here.
This performance is a reminder of this feeling of belonging. It is the landscape that we see when we drive a few miles outside of town. It is tobacco barns and wild turkeys and even quilts in our cedar chests. It is the changing seasons and the rain on a tin roof. It is our ancestors, and it is us.
And yes, it is a little bit wild, too. Martha Redbone’s website describes her music as a “unique gumbo” of sound. The music hits notes of bluegrass, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, folk, and even a little hint of country. The variety had me bopping in my seat one minute — and wiping a tear from my cheek the next.
“Guardian Spirit” brings the words of bell hooks to life and unites us with a sense of place and belonging.
I just wish my grandfathers were here to experience it with me.
Alissa Keller is the executive director of the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County. She’s a graduate of Centre College with degrees in history and English and of Clemson University/College of Charleston with a master’s degree in historic preservation. She serves on the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Museum and Heritage Alliance boards.
