Issue 115, Winter 2021

By the end of the 20th century, some six million Southerners had left their homes for New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Oakland, Milwaukee, Newark, Gary, and beyond. Each city transformed as the new denizens brought home with them. The Oxford American’s Winter 2021 issue focuses on Southern influences on American music beyond the borders of our region, reimagining these locales as Up South.

Our impressive lineup of contributors includes composer Terence Blanchard, who traces the Southern roots of Chicago-born Quincy Jones’s prolific production across an epic sixty-year career. The innovative recording artist Big Freedia writes a history of bounce and its spread from New Orleans to Houston and beyond. And a selection of featured images from the archive of Kwame Brathwaite tells a visual story of jazz and soul music through majestic performance portraits of Miles Davis, Max Roach, Nina Simone, and more.

Through essays, dispatches, and playlists curated by an exceptional lineup of musicians and writers, this issue explores the movement of Southern sounds and aesthetics, tracing the region's influence in Motown, Chicago gospel, and Philly soul, spanning the West Coast to Paris and beyond.