Essay
In 1986, singer Dobie Gray released From Where I Stand, an album identified as “country soul.” Because Gray, a Black man, had principally been marketed in pop and R&B, reviewers felt the need to address skepticism he might face about an entry into country music. “When they transition with Gray’s grace, then such moves should be »
Music
Each fall, the Country Music Association presents an awards show that it pioneered in 1967, a once-a-year opportunity to celebrate musicians and industry personnel with titles such as Entertainer of the Year and Song of the Year. Celebrating one winner in each category, these awards suggest to audiences that they summarize the state of country »
Music
Almost exactly two years ago, on October 31, 2022, one month after suffering a stroke on a flight home from Oakland, where he had been performing, Patrick Ambrose Haggerty, the visionary seventy-eight-year-old songwriter, singer, and embodiment of the band Lavender Country, died at his home in Bremerton, Washington. Beside him on both passages was Julius »
Essay
On a late autumn evening in 2005, I drove an hour out of Atlanta to Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church near Bremen, just a few miles east of the Georgia-Alabama border. The building sits only a few hundred feet from I-20, but the route to the church—about a half-mile past a gas station and through »
Interview
“Krip-Hop really stems from our ancestors, saying that we’ve been here and that hip-hop artists with disabilities matter. We’ve been here since the blues, [since] jazz.” Leroy F. Moore Jr. has long stood at the intersection of disability arts, advocacy, and activism over a wide-ranging and influential career. He cofounded (with Keith Jones) the Krip-Hop »
Essay
Summer 1964. Downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. Jim Scancarelli, staff member at local radio and television station WBT, spots “Uncle” Frank Rayborn sitting with his banjo on a poplar-wood chair on the sidewalk of South Tryon Street. He rushes to his office to grab a tape recorder. For this banjoist is truly unique: he only has »
Interview
In the mid-1970s, Sorrell Hays, a composer of electronic music, took her synthesizers, sound equipment, and contact mics to Dougherty County, Georgia. She was there to introduce children in newly desegregated classrooms to experimental forms of music-making. For Hays (1941–2020), it was a return to the South after almost two decades away and a confrontation »
Music
“I’d started to doubt the Gram Parsons myth, but I could still feel its narcotic lull.” Like many white Xennials, I learned about Gram Parsons late at night in a college dorm room, stoned and listening to somebody’s hippie parents’ records. Parsons played in the Byrds and taught the Rolling Stones about country music. He »
Music
“The music is a gift; it makes room for us.” As a young Black queer male growing up in South Carolina, I was fascinated by marching bands at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Involved in music programs at an early age, many of my music directors were HBCU alumni—South Carolina State, Savannah State, Fayetteville »
Interview
In advance of two special issues, Regina N. Bradley and Charles Hughes caught up to discuss the hip-hop South and the many ways that their varied interests intersect—from hip-hop histories and futures to riffing and representation. Those issues are now available: The Sonic South (Spring 2022), guest edited by Bradley, and Disability (Spring 2023), guest »
Music
My first exposure to the concept of love was memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 in Sunday school. Even as a little girl, the idea of a love that was patient, kind, selfless, and unconditional sounded like something I wanted to be a part of. Later on, Disney movies and fairy tales filled my tiny head with »
Essay
“‘Rhythm is who we are—if we didn’t have that, how could we make it?’” The question is: How do I render sound visible? For me, the answer is ethnopoetics, a mode of presenting performance, ritual, and cultural expression through the tools of poetry. In its possibilities for mirroring moments, and reflecting the spaciousness and impact »