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Coming November 2019 . . .

The Oxford American’s 21st Annual
Southern Music Issue & CD

Featuring
SOUTH CAROLINA

Pre-order your copy today.

The OA is thrilled to pair our South Carolina Music Issue announcement with an exclusive premiere of a new song from Ranky Tanky, the acclaimed Charleston band reviving the Gullah musical tradition of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. “Beat Em Down” is the title track from the band’s new EP, due out on Friday, and will be included on their upcoming album, Good Time (out July 12, 2019), the band’s first to include original compositions written in the Gullah tradition.

Check out the exclusive premiere of “Beat Em Down” from Charleston’s Ranky Tanky:

The Oxford American’s South Carolina Music Issue will celebrate the unforgettable stories, songs, and artists that convey the deep history and continuing vitality of South Carolina’s music—including icons like Dizzy Gillespie, Eartha Kitt, and the Marshall Tucker Band, as well as contemporary voices, such as Iron & Wine, Shovels and Rope, and, of course, Ranky Tanky.

As always, the music issue will come with a sampler compilation of songs spanning the 78-rpm era to the present (in CD and digital download formats), with accompanying liner notes included within the magazine.

Pre-order your copy today. Issues will ship the first week of November.

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Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem is the author of eleven novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and The Feral Detective. His music writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, and the 33 1/3 series, for which he wrote about Talking Heads’ Fear of Music. He lives in Los Angeles and Maine.

“Mashup (Two Cassettes Diptych)” (2008). © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and Graphicstudio. Photo by Will Lytch

Issue 103, Winter 2018

I Remember the dB's

November 20, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue.

I remember the dB’s. I was eighteen. It was 1982. The band was still together.

I remember time and space were different then, and information moved incrementally through these media. Only a handful of things ever happened to everyone all at once—things like John Lennon’s murder, or Reagan’s election.