Martín Perna
the last of the old and the first of the new
>MUSIC
Martín Perna is a culture worker: A Grammy-nominated producer, musician, writer and music scholar, he has performed over two thousand concerts in forty-three countries on five continents.
He began his music career on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label in 1995, and helped build the soul revival movement as a founding member of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and associated Desco and Daptone bands. As founder/bandleader of the group Antibalas, he has served as musical director at Carnegie Hall for several all-star homages honoring Paul Simon (2014), David Byrne & Talking Heads (2015) and Aretha Franklin (2017) as well as The Music of Billie Holiday at the Apollo Theater (2017).
He has lived and worked in diverse locales, from the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, where he arranged and co-produced an album with Creole Palo de Mayo music legend Mango Ghost, to Sicily where he helped produce and arrange work by Palermo troubadour Fabrizio Cammarata. In 2017, he travelled to Benin, West Africa to collaborate with Angelique Kidjo and student musicians at the CIAMO arts academy to produce the “Kids Against Malaria” PSA song and video. In 2018, he served on the faculty of African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He was named director of the SF Jazz / Oakland Public Conservatory’s youth jazz orchestra for the fall 2019 season.
musical collaborators in recent years include: Toro y Moi, Sulah Jordan, Tommy Guerrero, Orchestra Gold, Dos Santos, Coldcut, Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas), Santigold, Quantic, Angélique Kidjo, Jose James, Zara McFarland, Nona Hendryx, Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Greg Phillinganes, Willie Weeks, Dr. John (RIP), Michael McDonald, Ledisi, Anthony Hamilton, Gregory Porter, Valerie Simpson, Eric Harland, Ed Sheeran, The Roots, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Brian Jackson, Steven Bernstein, Saul Williams, Miguel Zenón, William Bell, Ricki Lee Jones, Bettye Lavette, Lizz Wright, Zap Mama, Santigold, The Roots, Lorenzo "Jovanotti" Cherubini, Sam Moore, Don Bryant, Kenny Loggins, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Chris Gabo, Moonrun, Sarah Dash, Taj and Deva Mahal, Todd Rundgren, Cee-Lo Green, Alice Russell, Melissa Etheridge, Ruthie Foster, Living Colour, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Mike Dillon and many others.
He is a contributing editor at the ASME Award-winning. literary travel magazine Stranger's Guide. He authored the children’s book Blackout, illustrated by NY Times bestselling illustrator Ricardo Cortes. He composed the liner notes for the 2018 Grammy-nominated Orquesta Akokan and liner notes/bios for several contemporary global music artists including Cochemea Gastelum and Okuté. In July 2020, he scored and performed music for Daveed Diggs’s performance of the poetry polemic “Fourth of July.”
>RESEARCH
His historic / genealogical, and political research work includes developmental research for HBO “True Detective,” and 2020 Pollie and Reed Award-winning archival research. He has facilitated critical genealogy workshops at MaxFunCon, University of California, Berkeley, and the Harker School.
* EQUIPMENT
Martín is an endorser for SYOS mouthpieces & Bari saxophone reeds and also plays a modified Theo Wanne Durga 6 custom crafted by Matt Ambrose.