By: L. Kent Wolgamott
In early January, Tank and the Bangas rolled north out of New Orleans to kick off their tour in support of The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, an album nominated for the Best Spoken Word Grammy.
That record, like all of Tank and the Bangas’ catalog, is rooted in the poetry of Tarriona “Tank” Ball. But as the Grammy category requires, it contains more than 50% playing time of new spoken word recordings.
When asked how the spoken word emphasis mixes with music and translates to the stage, Ball said, “Are you really asking ‘Is it going to be a boring show?’ Because no. If anyone is actually a fan and [has] 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 elaborated. “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.”
Called “one of the best live bands in America” by NPR Music, the sextet dynamically brings its blend of poetry, hip-hop, gospel, funk and rock to the stage, led by an 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 really derived from New Orleans styles.
“It comes from being a part of the spoken word community since I was young,” Ball said during a December Zoom conversation from her New Orleans home. “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. But, after a couple years, 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 non-competitive 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.”
That expression and expansion came via Tank and the Bangas, which Ball put together a dozen years ago. But the band didn’t break through outside New Orleans until 2017, when the group performed an NPR Tiny Desk Concert victory.
In 2019, the band released their 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.
Now The Heart, The Mind, The Soul has given Tank and the Bangas their third Grammy nomination, 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.”
Ball, however, is more than a slam poet or rapper. She can really sing, drawing on an innate talent that took some time to develop as she moved from slam poetry to music.
“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 took me a while, and I’m still trying to perfect this crap. It’s good to listen to a lot of recordings of yourself, because you can see where you go wrong and when you go right.”
While she was working on her voice at the time of this interview, Ball was also assembling the setlist that she and the Bangas will take 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. It’s going to be good and fun.”
