A New Orleans night with Tank and the Bangas

It’s devastating to think about all the music you will never get to hear before you die. I often wonder who are the artists changing the world at underground venues and hole-in-the-wall bars. Where are they from? Who are their peers? And how can I find their music without relying on music reviews alone? While I’m still trying to figure that out, I’m very grateful for the existence of things like NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. It’s what lead me to discover Tank and the Bangas in all of their colorful glory. After they won the Tiny Desk competition and gave their moving performance, the band gained universal acclaim and solidified their presence in the New Orlean’s music scene. The evidence of their recent impact lies in their November 9th co-headline with Big Freedia, a fellow New Orleans artist known for popularizing bounce music, at The UC Theatre in Berkeley.

Tank and Big Freedia’s openers were the six-piece jazz-funk ensemble Naughty Professor. Also from New Orleans, the band delivered an airtight set full of impressive jamming and solos. Soon after, Big Freedia and her dancers turned the venue upside down with their throbbing bass. In just an hour, Big Freedia managed to hold a twerk off, have one of her dancers run out into the crowd to dance on the bar, and turned the audience into a choir singing a passionate rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

If anyone thought the night couldn’t get any more exciting, the lights went down and three people wearing large panda heads slowly crept onstage. The music swelled and the pandas revealed themselves to be backup singers Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, Kayla Buggage, and lead vocalist Tarriona “Tank” Ball. The stage was significantly larger than the office desk they performed at for NPR, but what the band lacked in that immediate intimacy they made up for in blazing stage presence.

From the middle of the venue, I watched them perform their breakout song “Quick.” Before I had watched their Tiny Desk, I had never heard anything like Tank and the Bangas. Their genre-blending approach to New Orleans sounds is so refreshing and offers a deeply intimate look into what has inspired them. In turn, they have inspired me to look further into New Orleans music, as well as spoken word poets like Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa.

Of course, I’ll never be able to discover and experience all of the music in the world, but after seeing Tank and the Bangas, I’m closer than I’ve ever been before.

Article and Photos by Rebekah Gonzalez