In early January, Tank and the Bangas rolled north out of New Orleans to kick off its tour in support of “The Heart, The Mind, The Soul,” an album that recently won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word.
Like all of Tank and the Bangas’ catalog, the record is rooted in the poetry of Tarriona “Tank” Ball. As the Grammy category requires, more than 50% of its playing time is dedicated to new spoken word recordings.
So, how does the spoken word emphasis mix with music and translate to the stage?
“Are you really asking ‘Is it going to be a boring show?’ Because, no,” Ball said about her group’s performance on April 17 at Variety Playhouse. “If anyone is actually a fan and have been to the shows, they all know that my poems are my songs, and my songs are my poems.
“So I really speak them however I feel like doing them at the moment,” she said. “It’s still very dynamic and still very energetic and very entertaining. It’s not like a snooze fest or anything like that because it’s poetry. Because the way that I do it, the way Tank and the Bangas does it, it’s really good.”
Dubbed “one of the best live bands in America” by NPR Music, the sextet brings its dynamic blend of poetry, hip-hop, gospel, funk and rock to the stage, led by the exuberant Ball, who’s all over the place, singing, rapping, speaking poetry and dancing.
While that mix of music would seem to be a blend of Crescent City sounds, Tank and the Bangas’ music isn’t derived from New Orleans styles.
“It comes from being a part of the spoken word community since I was young,” Ball said. “When I was in my poetry group here in New Orleans, we combined music and poetry in a way that no other team did before. It was very unique, and our songs were so catchy, and we had hand movements and everything to go with it.”
Ball’s crew dominated New Orleans slam poetry, winning every contest and drawing ever-increasing audiences. After a couple years, however, Ball realized she had to move on from the slam scene to bring her full creative vision to life.
“I wanted to do this in a noncompetitive way, I want to do it my way,” she said. “I wanted to take the lessons that I learned from them, which was combining music and poetry in such an interesting way, and just take it full throttle and not be on the time schedule with it. When you slam and compete with your poetry, you only have three minutes, and like 15 seconds to do it. I knew I needed more time to express and expand myself.”
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
That expression and expansion came via Tank and the Bangas, which Ball put together a dozen years ago. But the band didn’t breakthrough outside New Orleans until 2017 when it won the NPR Tiny Desk Contest.
In 2019, the band released its third album, “Green Balloon,” on Verve Forecast, and it earned a 2020 Best New Artist Grammy nomination. “Red Balloon” followed in 2022, and Ball said many people consider it the band’s best album. It received a Best Progressive R&B Album Grammy nod in 2023.
Along the way, Tank and the Bangas have performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Austin City Limits,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Today Show” and appeared at top festivals, including Coachella, Glastonbury, Bonnaroo and the Newport Jazz Festival.
“We’ve been getting a lot of different looks from a lot of different celebrities, and that’s really cool,” Ball said.
Now “The Heart, The Mind, The Soul” has given Tank and the Bangas another Grammy win, which was particularly rewarding for Ball.
“It was my passion project,” Ball said of the album that combines three releases. “My label really believed in me to do it and they gave me the time to focus on spoken word and music the way that I want to do it, and release it very uniquely in three parts. It’s crazy to see it pay off.”
Tank and the Bangas’ latest single, released late last year with a video featuring Ball singing and dancing with a troupe of Black women, is the irresistibly catchy, lyrically insightful “This Black Girl.”
“The reason I call it ‘This Black Girl’ is because, like I said in the poem, I don’t speak for all Black women,” Ball said. “We have shared experiences, but we are not all the same. I’m talking about my very own a lot.”
This time, the Tank and the Bangas song is set to smooth R & B/pop.
“I just go back to my poems and I just make them melodies,” Ball said of her songwriting. “Some of the poems just need to stay a poem, but some of them have the potential to be melody.”
More than a slam poet or a rapper, Ball can really sing, drawing on talent that took some time to develop.
“All my family can sing, but I think it took me a while to realize that singing wasn’t just me moving my mouth like this,” she said. “It hurts to listen to yourself sometimes because you’re like ‘I sound crazy.‘. So (But) it’s good to listen to yourself so that you can edit and grow and get better.”
While she was working on her voice at the time of this interview, Ball was also assembling the set list that she and the Bangas will take took on the road this spring.
“I’m putting together a beautiful show,” she said. “It should be very fun and full of texture and poetic and musical. I have to add in some fan favorites. And new things are going to become their favorites, too.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Tank and the Bangas
7:30 p.m. April 17 at Variety Playhouse. DJ Zeus opens. $25-$99 plus fees and taxes. 1099 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta. variety-playhouse.com
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