Songwriting, Tiny Desk, Big Freedia, Obama, The Heart, Mind & Soul, and the GRAMMY-Winning Voice of New Orleans
Tarriona "Tank" Ball is one of the most singular voices in American music. As the lead singer and creative center of Tank and the Bangas, she led the New Orleans band to a viral NPR Tiny Desk Contest win in 2017 that introduced them to a global audience overnight and set the trajectory for everything that followed. Their music blends R&B, soul, jazz, spoken word, and New Orleans second-line into something that belongs entirely to them -- a sound rooted in a specific city and tradition while reaching far beyond it. Their Grammy win for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album with the three-part EP series "The Heart, The Mind & The Soul" confirmed what listeners had known for years: Tank Ball is a generational creative force.
In this conversation with Elmo, Tank opens up about the complete arc of her creative life: how she writes, what New Orleans gave her that no other city could have, the story of the Tiny Desk win and what it actually changed, the collaboration with Big Freedia, the meaning behind "The Heart, The Mind & The Soul" trilogy, and what it felt like to perform for President Obama. She's candid about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of songwriting, about building a band that functions as a family, and about what she believes art is actually for in a world that treats it as entertainment.
"New Orleans didn't teach me to make music. It taught me that music is just what you do when you're alive."
The full story of the Tiny Desk Contest win that changed everything: what the submission was like, what winning felt like, and what the overnight exposure to a massive new audience actually did for the band's career, their relationship with their hometown, and Tank's own sense of what she was building and where it could go.
Tank's creative process: where her songs come from, how spoken word and poetry live inside her music rather than sitting outside it, and the specific way New Orleans shaped her voice as a writer -- the rhythms, the storytelling traditions, the willingness to be emotionally direct in a way that many contemporary artists have been trained out of.
The three-part EP series that won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album: the concept behind the trilogy, what each installment was exploring, and what it means to Tank to have built a body of work that the Recording Academy recognized in a category that honors the intersection of language and music at its most serious.
The collaboration with Big Freedia and what it represents: two New Orleans artists who come from different corners of the city's musical culture finding a shared creative space, what Freedia brought to the music, and what the collaboration reveals about the breadth of Tank's artistry and her ability to move across genres without losing herself.
The experience of performing for Barack Obama: what that moment meant personally, the preparation and the emotion, and what it represented for a band from New Orleans who had built their following from the ground up through live performance and the kind of slow, honest growth that doesn't fit easily into a social media-friendly narrative.
What makes Tank and the Bangas more than a band: the relationships, the creative trust, the way they've built an ensemble that functions as a community rather than a professional arrangement, and what Tank believes about the difference between a group of musicians who work together and a group of people who are genuinely making something together.
Tank on New Orleans as a creative education: the specific things growing up in that city gave her as a songwriter and performer that she couldn't have gotten anywhere else, and why she believes the city's musical culture -- its relationship to grief, celebration, community, and ritual -- shaped not just her sound but her entire philosophy of what music is for.
The Tiny Desk story in full: the decision to enter, the performance itself, what winning felt like in real time, and the specific ways the exposure changed their lives -- the parts that were wonderful, the parts that were disorienting, and the lessons she took from the experience of going from beloved local act to national phenomenon almost overnight.
On the Grammy win and what it meant: the emotional reality of receiving recognition in a category that honors language and music together, what the trilogy represented as a creative statement, and her honest feelings about what awards do and don't tell you about the actual value of what you've made.
Her songwriting process from the inside: where songs begin for her, how spoken word lives inside the music rather than on top of it, and the specific creative habits and disciplines that allow her to access the emotional directness that makes Tank and the Bangas feel unlike anything else in contemporary music.
On art and purpose: what Tank believes music is actually for, why she thinks the entertainment-first framing of contemporary music culture misses something essential, and what she wants the people who listen to her music to feel in their bodies and their lives that they couldn't get from anything else.
Her advice for artists trying to build something real: the specific things she would tell a younger version of herself, the role of place and community in creative development, and what she believes about the long game of building a career that is actually connected to who you are rather than who the market wants you to be.