Martin Perna

Photo by Tunde Adebimpe

Martín Perna is the founder of the group. He lives and works in Austin, TX and Brooklyn, New York.

He began his path as a professional musician living in New York in 1995 at age 20, making many of his first recordings and performances with the as a founding member of the Soul Providers / Desco Records label that would later become Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Inspired in part by his participation on the seminal Daktaris “Soul Explosion” album  he founded Antibalas in 1998.

Perna began his informal musical studies listening to samples of funk and jazz saxophone in hip hop of the late 80s and early 90s, and through eclectic pieces of his parents’ LP collection which included Santana, Baba Olatunji, Otis Redding, Billy Cobham, the Beatles, and the Talking Heads. After picking up the saxophone, he began playing frequently, studying from the trained players around him. Later, began studying music formally including studies in shekere with Madeleine Yayodele Nelson of Women of the Calabash, and flute with Felipe Mustelier at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (Havana, Cuba).

Outside of Antibalas, his latest musical project, Ocote Soul Sounds, is a fixture on from dancefloors to underground radio to HBO’s Entourage. This project has grown from a solo project to a rich collaboration with Austin-based Adrian Quesada of Grammy nominated Grupo Fantasma and other musicians spanning from Austin, to LA, to New York to Sao Paulo Brazil. The duo created their first album “El Niño y El Sol” in Texas after a chance meeting in 2004. The album was rereleased in 2006 on the ESL Music label followed by “The Alchemist Manifesto” (2008) and most recently “Coconut Rock” (2009). The group recently toured the Northeast and Canada with the Thievery Corporation in fall 2009, and is completing their fourth album, produced by Eric Hilton.

Since 2002 Perna has collaborated with the group TV on the Radio whose latest album Dear Science (Interscope) recently made Best of 2008 in both Rolling Stone and Spin. He has also performed and/or recorded with a diverse array of artists including reggae legend Burning Spear, Grammy-winning Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Sinead O’Connor and Scarlett Johansson, Angelique Kidjo, and many others.

Off-stage he has been working closely on advocacy and policy issues related to music and the arts with the Future of Music Coalition in Washington, DC. He has performed at benefits for New Orleans musicians, spoke at the 2009 FMC music policy summit in Washington, DC, and has made visits to Capitol Hill to speak with US senators and representatives about open internet, media consolidation, performance rights royalties, and aid to New Orleans. He is currently preparing testimony to deliver to the FCC about the need for open internet. He serves on the board of Artists in Hospitals, an Austin-based non-profit arts organization which builds collaborative healing projects with hospitalized youth and their families in Austin and Houston, Texas.

He is currently in his final year in a Masters of Education/ Education Technology program at the University of Texas-Brownsville.