UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Ranky Tanky, 5 p.m. Thursday, April 15. Charleston’s Ranky Tanky arrived on the music scene with an inspired take on the soulful songs of South Carolina’s Gullah culture, taking home the 2020 Grammy win for Best Regional Roots Music Album.

The virtual event is part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Race to Justice series.

With a name that translates loosely as Get Funky, Ranky Tanky is an upbeat ambassador of Gullah, a culture known for retaining more African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the U.S.

Preserving and paying homage to a vanishing way of life, the quintet introduces audiences to the language, rhythm and music of the region with a distinctly American sound that incorporates jazz, blues, gospel and R&B.

The performance will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Charles Donelan, Santa Barbara Independent executive arts editor.

Ranky Tanky released its eponymous debut in October 2017, and by December 2017 the group had been profiled on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” and their album soared to the No. 1 position on the Billboard, iTunes and Amazon Jazz Charts.

The band of native South Carolinians mix the Low Country traditions with large doses of jazz, gospel, funk and R&B.

Fresh out of college, trumpeter Charlton Singleton, guitarist Clay Ross, bassist Kevin Hamilton and drummer Quentin Baxter originally worked together as an in-demand jazz quartet on the Charleston scene in the late 1990s before splitting off to each make their way as freelance musicians, working with names like Houston Person, Freddy Cole, Cyro Baptista and René Marie

Gaining years of experience while developing a deeper appreciation for the South Carolina Gullah tradition they came from, the band reformed with the vocalist Quiana Parler to celebrate the mix of spirituals and blues that mark the Low Country mainland and Sea Islands, music made by a self-contained culture of descendants of enslaved Africans that introduced such indelible parts of American songbook as “Kum Bah Yah” and “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore.”

Tickets are $10 for the general public; free for UCSB students (registration required). For tickets and more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535 or visit www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.