NORWOOD — The Norwood Village Green Concert Series will conclude its 50th Anniversary Season on Sunday, Aug. 13 with a special performance from two time Grammy winning group, Ranky Tanky at 7 p.m.

Ranky Tanky is an American musical ensemble based in Charleston, South Carolina. The group specializes in jazz-influenced arrangements of traditional Gullah music- a culture that originated among descendants of enslaved Africans in the Low country region of the US Southeast. The overall goal of the group was to create a contemporary interpretation of the Gullah musical vocabulary to share with the world, while remaining true to the pared-down, working-class attitude of their cultural songs. Ranky Tanky means get “Funky and Work it!”

Their debut self-titled album, ‘Ranky Tanky’, was released in October 2017. By the week of February 10, 2018, it was listed number one in the Billboard jazz charts, a position it held for two weeks. For their album Good Time, the band won the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Regional Roots Music Album. In 2023, they won a second Grammy in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category, for Live at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Apart from lead vocalist Quiana Parler, four of the group's members, Quentin Baxter, Kevin Hamilton, Clay Ross, and Charlton Singleton, previously played together in the Charleston jazz quartet ‘The Gradual Lean’ in the late 1990s.

The Gullah lyrics and melodies that Ranky Tanky uses range from traditional spirituals, to children's rhymes and dance music. Due to its relative geographic isolation, the Sea Islands region preserved more of the West African rhythms, dialects, and musical traditions than the mainland US, which once combined with British colonial influence emerged as the distinct Gullah culture. Ranky Tanky's use of instruments like the electric guitar and trumpet are novel additions to Gullah music, which was historically performed using only a cappella voices and body percussion. Clay Ross credits the 20th century African American folk singer Bessie Jones as laying much of the groundwork for the band, due to her extensive recording and documentation of the songs and rhymes later used in Ranky Tanky.

For more information about the group, check out their website at: Rankytanky.com

The series is supported in part by the Office of the Governor and New York State Legislature.

For further information consult the series website: nvgcs.org or call 315-261-2866.