This limited-run poster of our latest issue cover features “My butterfly year” by Dianna Settles, a Vietnamese-American artist from Atlanta. Her paintings trace “relationships to nature, autonomy, self-sufficiency, protest, work, and the solitude necessary for being amongst others.” Supplies are limited so grab this collector’s item today!
Magazine
Issue 103, Winter 2018
North Carolina Music Issue
The Oxford American presents its 20th annual Southern Music Issue, featuring more than twenty-five stories exploring the history and legacy of North Carolina music. Among the many notable contributors to this year’s Southern Music Issue are novelists Jonathan Lethem, Jill McCorkle, and Wiley Cash, and the beloved North Carolina musicians Rhiannon Giddens and Tift Merritt. Tryon-native Nina Simone, one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, graces the cover in a portrait by Jim Blanchard; Simone is the subject of a feature essay about artistic influence and identity, written by poet Tiana Clark.
The issue comes with a 28-song sampler of recordings by North Carolinians sourced across nearly a century. The compilation highlights music from NC legends like Simone, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson, James Taylor, and Elizabeth Cotten, plus a wide-ranging host of others. Accompanying the sampler are detailed liner notes and essays on the songs by Ron Rash, Laura Ballance, Randall Kenan, and others.
THE MUSIC OF NORTH CAROLINA
Notes on the songs, including:
"Lights in the Valley" (Live)
Rhiannon Giddens on Joe & Odell Thompson
“Don't Play That Song (You Lied)”
Michael Parker on Ruby Johnson
"You Don't Come See Me Anymore"
Mark Powell on Malcolm Holcombe
"Holy Ghost, Unchain My Name"
Tift Merritt on Elizabeth Cotten
“Mill Mother's Lament“
Wiley Cash on Ella May Wiggins
"Me Oh My"
David Joy on the Honeycutters
“Somebody Else's World“
Harmony Holiday on June Tyson
Plus
David Menconi, Ron Rash, Nathan Salsburg, Maxwell Neely-Cohen, Laura Ballance, Marshall Wyatt, Brendan Greaves, and Randall Kenan
POINTS SOUTH
John Coltrane’s Spiritual High Point, by Benjamin Hedin
Beach Music Memories, by Jill McCorkle
Why 9th Wonder Stayed, by Dasan Ahanu
Two Lumbee Baptisms, by Malinda Maynor Lowery
Etta Baker’s Morganton Chord, by Rebecca Bengal
I Remember the dB’s, by Jonathan Lethem
James Taylor’s Chapel Hill, by Will Blythe
Big Boy Henry’s Open-Hearted Blues, by Tom Rankin
La Musica Latina en Charlotte, by Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas
John Cage’s Black Mountain Music, by John Thomason
Wesley Johnson, A Teentone in Rome, by Jon Kirby
Ryan Adams, Thomas Wolfe, and Leaving Home, by Maxwell George
How Kinston Changed Music, by Sarah Bryan
George Clinton’s Funky Origins, by Dave Tompkins
POETRY
Of What America, by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
Hellbender, by Nickole Brown
The World Grows, by Tyree Daye
North Carolina State Fair, by C. L. White
Fort Bragg Winter, by Zachary Lunn
FEATURES
Nina Is Everywhere I Go
Finding the artist by facing the damage that made me
by Tiana Clark
That Kind of Money
Liquid Pleasure’s ascent into wedding band superstardom
by Abigail Covington
The Gospel of Jodeci
Sex, money, God, and slow jams
by Lauren Du Graf
Queen of Snow Hill
Rapsody on top in hip-hop—and at home
by L. Lamar Wilson
Mystic Chords
Link Wray—power-chord progenitor—made his most transcendent music in a chicken shack
by John O’Connor
Art by: Jim Blanchard, Sandlin Gaither, Juan Logan, Minnie Evans, David Holt, Gai Terrell, Marthanna Yater, Scott Hazard, Hatty Ruth Miller, Christian Marclay, Jeremy M. Lange, Tom Rankin, Rosalia Torres-Weiner, Joseph Fiore, Lindsay Metivier, Romare Bearden, Richard E. Aaron, Angela Franks Wells, Amy Sherald, Fahamu Pecou, Deborah Roberts, Tom Martin, Chris Charles