Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday February 18th, 2026 with Alnoor Allidina
Black History Month, show #3: Matana Roberts' Coin Coin Project

Matana Roberts (born 1975 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American composer, saxophonist/clarinetist, spoken word artist, and sound experimentalist who was raised on Chicago’s South Side, where they studied classical clarinet during their youth. Roberts became active in the city’s jazz and experimental music scenes, formed the trio Sticks and Stones, and later became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) before relocating to New York in 2002. Their Coin Coin series is a projected 12-volume (or perhaps 13!) series bridging the spirit world, the complexities of American history, and Roberts' own ancestry going back to about 1750. "Coin Coin is a nickname of a very famous former slave woman that I’m related to by marriage. It’s possible that I’m in there by blood, but I don’t know for certain. She became a very powerful landowner in a part of Louisiana called Natchitoches. She created this whole area where free people of color could live and exist, and have a really incredible standard of life in America during a time period where you wouldn’t expect that to be happening. She was the first strong female archetype I’d been exposed to as a child, my grandfather used to call me Coin Coin and I learned about her before I learned about Harriet Tubman and all these people."