Martin Toe brings activism and Afrobeats to BNH Stage
There’s no line between work and music for Martin Toe, the organizer and hip-hop artist behind albums like Civic Leader and last year’s Love Is Godly. Alongside fellow New Hampshire artists B. Snair, Vincent Tesoro and Marxo Phenix, Toe performs in Concord on June 27 in a show that’s both a homecoming and a statement about the state’s music scene.
Toe has been organizing for over a decade, first as an intern with American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker social-justice group. Later, he co-founded Change for Concord (later rebranded as Hope Project New Hampshire) and eventually landed at the Granite State Organizing Project, bringing together faith leaders and communities of color across the state.
In a recent Zoom interview, he described the connection between his day job and performing as natural and vital.
“It’s super authentic for me, it doesn’t feel like work,” he said when asked how organizing feeds his songwriting. “What I say in my music doesn’t feel forced. I have an endless pool of inspiration to pull from because I am interacting with that world every single day.”
The BNH Stage show won’t be Toe’s first time in the Concord listening room. He headlined a Black History Month Unity concert there in February 2023 with friend and collaborator Destin Boy. He said this lineup came together through a series of Zoom calls among artists who’d long wanted to work together but hadn’t had the chance.
“The music scene can seem very scattered here in New Hampshire, but I think the state’s working very hard to pull artists together and highlight … a very talented pool of artists that we have,” he said, adding that despite sharing a stage, the three acts don’t sound alike, and that’s the point.
“These guys pull from all different sorts of creative spaces, and the music is not the same, which is awesome,” he said. “Phenix might throw some R&B stuff in there, more of the funk vibes. B. Snair comes in with a fusion mix of rock and hip-hop. Then you got me in there with the Afrobeats and hip-hop.”
What unites them, he said, isn’t genre but geography and circumstance, a shared expression of having grown up in New Hampshire, and an instinct to write about real life.
“Whether it’s the cost of rent or groceries,” he said. “We’re trying to paint a picture of, yeah, we can have fun. At the same time, we can feel what’s happening emotionally across the state.”
History and hope permeate many of Toe’s songs. On “Free,” a standout track from Love Is Godly, he sings “Can’t you see, 1847 we’re free,” referencing Liberia’s declaration of independence — the African country was founded that year by former slaves from the United States.
The song then gently moves in a meditation on what that may have felt like. “Sweet Liberty Bell is ringing from the high seas, whistling through the high trees,” he continues. “Let them know for sure that I am free.” And for Toe, freedom isn’t an abstraction, it’s something he’s writing from memory.
When he was 7, Toe and his family were forced to flee when civil war fighting reached his Ivory Coast town, part of the broader Ivorian and Liberian conflict that displaced hundreds of thousands.
“It was very difficult,” he recalled. “The sound of gunshots, seeing smoke billowing in the air, and fleeing, not knowing if you’re ever going to go back.” He still carries that experience vividly, and it shapes how he talks to his American friends who grew up without knowing war firsthand.
“War leaves a wound, and whenever specific stories come up, it festers that wound again,” he said. “Then, you have to sit with it … let it heal.”
Music is, for him, part of healing, and a reminder — to fight for peace and be sure that life’s beauty isn’t taken for granted. That spirit continues with a forthcoming album, The Gaffa, due to drop on Aug. 28, the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. It opens with MLK’s voice, saying he’s tired of marching for what should have been his at birth.
What follows are fierce lyrics, about “boardrooms that feel like a battlefield” and a generation organizing for a seat, or as Toe puts it, deciding to “move the whole table” instead. It’s a fitting next step from an artist who’s spent a decade learning that the fight for dignity and the urge to make music have never really been separate.
Martin Toe, B. Snair & Vincent Tesoro, Marxo Phenix
When: Saturday, June 27, 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18, ccanh.com
Featured photo: Martin Toe. Courtesy photo.