Gullah Music of the Carolina Coast

Ranky Tanky makes joy sound like a responsibility. The two-time Grammy Award winning quintet from Charleston, South Carolina featuring Quiana Parler (vocals), Charlton Singleton (trumpet, vocals), Clay Ross (guitar, vocals), Kevin Hamilton (bass), and Quentin E. Baxter (drums, percussion), draws on the living well of Gullah music from the Sea Islands and carries it forward with jazz verve, gospel fire, blues feeling, and soul-deep groove. Their very name, from the Gullah language, means “work it” or “get funky,” which is exactly what they do: turn ring shouts, children’s game songs, work songs, and spirituals into modern American music that moves both body and memory.

Formed in 2016, Ranky Tanky broke through with a self-titled debut that rose to No. 1 on Billboard’s Jazz chart, proof that a music rooted in community could also top the national conversation. Coverage followed on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and NBC’s TODAY, milestones that introduced Gullah’s cadences and stories to an even wider audience.

Good Time (2019) expanded the canon with originals inspired by tradition and earned the band its first Grammy for Best Regional Roots Music Album in 2020, the first time an album of Gullah music received that honor. In 2023, Ranky Tanky captured their onstage electricity with Live at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and won the category again, becoming the most awarded group in its history.

As cultural stewards and world-class performers, the band has brought Gullah music to major platforms including PBS NewsHour and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s #PlayAtHome, where the charge is simple and urgent: celebrate, remember, repair, and… dance. 

That spirit powers their new single, “Be Alright” (out Oct 24), mixed by multiple-Grammy winner Vance Powell (Jack White, Chris Stapleton, The Revivalists). A first glimpse of the forthcoming album This Village (2026), “Be Alright” is Ranky Tanky at their most invitational: a hand on your shoulder, a backbeat under your feet, and a chorus that carries the past into the room so the present can answer back. The result is ancestral funk for right now. Music that holds history to the light and asks us, kindly but clearly, to move.

Quentin Baxter / Drums and Percussion
Kevin Hamilton / Bass
Quiana Parler / Vocalist
Clay Ross / Guitar and Vocals
Charlton Singleton / Trumpet and Vocals