New Music: Tank and the Bangas Lament Over Gentrification on Single, “There Goes The Neighborhood”.
“Why when they come, it change?
Taking and owning all that was supposed to be mine
Owning what I decided to rent
Buying what I sold
Making my hood their home
And all I could do was watch and welcome”
– Tank and The Bangas- There Goes The Neighborhood, Verse 3.
New Orleans-based music group, Tank and The Bangas offer an all-too-common story on the circumstances that changed grandma’s block on their latest single, “There Goes the Neighborhood”.
Tarriona “Tank” Ball says, “‘There Goes The Neighborhood’ is a poetic and clear-cut way we look at the ripping of historical neighborhoods of Black and Brown people of New Orleans and around the world. We hope to shed light not only on the conditions they endure because they are there, but the changes that happen when they leave.” The single was released on June 17, 2022, in honor of Juneteenth and Black Music Month.
New Orleans is the 5th fastest gentrifying city in the United States of America. According to CNN and the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, natural disasters and climate change are major contributing factors to the economic and demographic changes happening across 13 census tracts of New Orleans.
“Black New Orleanians have been relegated to neighborhoods that are further from the city center, and neighborhoods that flood much more easily.”
Cashauna Hill, the executive director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center interviewed by CNN March 3, 2021)
Learn more about Climate Gentrification in New Orleans here: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/03/us/climate-gentrification-cnnphotos-invs/
