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Tank & The Bangas VibeZ

Tank and The Bangas won a national contest by being impossible to categorise, and they have spent every year since proving it was not a fluke. Twenty-two tracks of New Orleans doing what New Orleans does.

Poetry, funk, and a band that refuses to sit still

Tarriona "Tank" Ball came out of the New Orleans spoken-word scene, and that origin explains almost everything about the band. Her delivery moves between singing, rapping and straight recitation, often within a single verse, with a rhythmic freedom that comes from performing poetry rather than writing to a bar count.

The band around her — drawing on New Orleans funk, gospel, jazz and hip-hop — won NPR's Tiny Desk Contest in 2017, and the resulting performance became one of the most-watched in the series' history. A Grammy nomination for Best New Artist followed in 2020, an unusual outcome for a group this hard to file.

What to listen for

"A Poem Is" with Jill Scott is the thesis statement — two artists who came up through spoken word, in conversation about the form itself. "Black Folk" with Alex Isley and Masego is the most beautiful thing here.

"Human" and "Colors Change" represent the band at their most direct. "Rollercoasters" and "Enjoy The Ride" show the funk chops without the theatrics. "Instructions on Being" and "Open To Thyself" lean into the poetry.

The New Orleans collaborations are the local colour and worth every second: "Betty Bussit" with Big Freedia brings bounce into the mix, and "What The World Needs Now" assembles what looks like half the city — PJ Morton, David Shaw, Maggie Koerner, Sasha Masakowski and more — on one track.

"Get Up - Interlude" with Robert Glasper and "Fluff" with Duckwrth and trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah show how comfortably they sit alongside serious jazz musicians. "New Orleans - Live" closes the loop.

Twenty-two tracks. Loud, generous, and completely its own thing.

Go deeper

Green Balloon (2019) and Red Balloon (2022) are the albums, and their Tiny Desk contest-winning performance is the best four minutes of introduction available.

For the New Orleans context: PJ Morton — who appears on this playlist — is the city's finest current soul songwriter, Trombone Shorty the most visible ambassador, and Big Freedia the queen of bounce. Jon Batiste comes from the same musical family tree.

For the spoken-word lineage, Jill Scott (here on "A Poem Is"), The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron are the ancestors. And Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, the trumpeter on "Fluff," leads one of the most interesting bands in modern jazz.

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