A Grammy-nominated band will perform a rare nightclub show in D.C. next week to benefit JusticeAid, a D.C.-based nonprofit working to get people more civically engaged.
Tank and the Bangas – nominated for a 2020 Best New Artist Grammy – will headline the benefit Monday at The Hamilton.
“D.C shows us so much love,” Tarriona “Tank” Ball said. “I have family there. Every time I come there, it's an amazing crowd. I love D.C.”
Ball is the driving force behind the New Orleans-based group performing to raise money for JusticeAid, a non-partisan nonprofit that uses music and the arts to promote social awareness.
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“Particularly in marginalized communities and minority, lower income communities, it's important that everybody get out the vote,” said Kim Duckett Coaxum of JusticeAid. “In Virginia, for example, the entire legislature is up for election. This is a pivotal time.”
This year, JusticeAid chose to partner with Black Voters Matter, a non-partisan group focused on increasing civic engagement in states, including Virginia.
“Our role is to help people better understand why it is important that they're participating in the process and really understand the process better,” said LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter. “And even to the extent that they think that things should be changed, how can they use their power as an individual, their power as a citizen, their power as a Virginian, to really be able to change and shift and make that state the state that they desire and the state that they deserve.”
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For Tank, blending her music with social change is a perfect fit.
“It pays so much homage to those that came before me – to my grandfather, who was such a freedom fighter in New Orleans; to my mom, who desegregated the first school in the South in New Orleans,” she said. “It just means a lot to me to know that every vote truly does matter.”
“All of that is your life. Politics is life, and art is life,” she said. “So, to combine all of these things, all it does is take away the name of what it already is, which is basically life. And we have to connect these things together, so people won't see it as such a divide. That's where we come into play. We’re reminding you there's no divide. We're all in this together. Don't forget.”
Tank and the Bangas will perform Monday night at The Hamilton Live in downtown D.C. Monday afternoon, MSNBC’s Joy Reid will moderate a forum on social justice. Both events are open to the public.
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