An installment in our weekly photography series, Eyes on the South
Eyes on the South curator Jeff Rich interviewed artist Alex Harris, whose series Our Strange New Land is the High Museum’s most recent Picturing the South commission. They were joined by the associate curator of photography at the museum, Gregory Harris, who worked closely with Alex on the exhibition.
A Points South essay from the South Carolina Music Issue.
Before she was Catwoman on the television show Batman in the 1960s, before she spoke out against the Vietnam War and was exiled for it, before her redemption and the sold-out shows with a multicultural international repertoire at Café Carlyle in New York City in the 1990s, she was simply Eartha Mae Keith, a little girl who never knew her daddy and whose mama had given her away before she was school-aged because she couldn’t afford to keep her.
Track 17 – “My Father Is a Witness, Oh, Bless God” by the Plantation Echoes
Established in early 1933, the Plantation Echoes were made up of fifty Gullah field hands who enjoyed singing spirituals, most dating back to slavery. A handful of the singers were, in fact, former slaves themselves. Heyward’s praise of the Plantation Echoes was effusive. “The entertainment is not only highly unique but enlightening,” he later remarked. “There is an electrifying quality to the ‘shouting’ and the performers’ ability to shift from one time to another in perfect unison is a revelation.”
In the latest installation for its Picturing the South project, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art presents Our Strange New Land: Photographs by Alex Harris. Taken over the course of two years and encompassing most of the South, Harris’s series documents independent film sets, exploring “how the region is seen, imagined, and created by contemporary visual storytellers.”
A Points South essay from the South Carolina Music Issue.
A problem solver, Jones would ultimately get his drums from his mother’s record collection, as her Charles Wright and Isaac Hayes albums began migrating into his room. “There wasn’t enough money for records,” he recalled. “Or I couldn’t find them. So I’d record songs on the radio off the reel-to-reel, and take the reel-to-reel to the party.” There’s a photograph of Jones deejaying the Charleston YMCA wearing pleated baggies and a fade, with a Michelob parked in front of his Akai séance machine.
A liner note essay from our South Carolina Music Issue
We all know that Southern music needs to be heard and celebrated. However, visibility (exposure) cannot be pitted against our chance at a healthy life. The Oxford American’s ask of under-resourced Southern musicians to donate their song licenses is exploitative, and must end.
A feature essay from the South Carolina Music Issue.
Outside of his studies, Ron joined, and eventually presided over, the A&T karate club, and still made time to stay sharp on his saxophone. “People talk about born geniuses, but I always thought of Ron as a self-made genius,” recalled Ron’s college roommate, Keenan Sarratt. “He got his through hard work. That’s one thing I learned from him—nothing’s impossible. If it couldn’t be done, you’d have to convince him it couldn’t be done.”
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
As Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) audio director John Biewen preps for the next season of Scene on Radio, the podcast is headed to 5 million downloads, episodes are being used in classrooms and independent discussion groups across the country, and media outlets—Los Angeles Review of Books, Columbia Journalism Review, Buzzfeed, among others—have taken note. Here, John sets the scene for the upcoming season.
In an effort to manifest William Faulkner’s idea that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Lake Roberson Newton’s project, Flowers for the Dead, examines the preservation of historical homes, exploring how previously private spaces are transformed for, and by, public consumption.
Notes on the songs from our 21st Southern Music Issue Sampler featuring South Carolina.
It is fitting that this Southern Music Issue (the Oxford American’s twenty-first) devoted to South Carolina should come in 2019, as the nation moves to better recognize the tragic anniversary of the first sale of enslaved Africans on American soil, in August of 1619. About forty percent of the enslaved people brought to America came through Charleston; today most African Americans have roots in the city (some estimates go as high as eighty percent). Or to put a finer point on it, as Joshunda Sanders writes in this issue, “No Black person has a family tree that has not been pruned by slavery.” Acknowledging, parsing, and reckoning with this history is the prominent theme of this South Carolina music issue—as is celebrating the immense wealth of cultural heritage that has sprung from this small, proud place.
Farewell to Deputy Editor Maxwell George
On Max’s last day at the Oxford American, we’re sharing ten highlights from his years with the magazine.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
For twenty years, football was my purpose, my reason, white lines and rules for everything, the scoreboard keeping track of it all. Do I want it back? Do I pine for a helmet and a fourth-quarter drive?
Not exactly.
