Nelson Eubanks

This residency in New Orleans in the fall of 2023 will reconnect Melodious Thunk’s documentary crew with TBC Brass Band after a 20-year separation brought on by Hurricane Katrina. By comparing our recordings of TBC in their infancy as a band (2002–2005), we’ll explore their evolution over a 20-year period. During this collaboration we will produce and document a Second Line parade and series of live performances in places significant to African-American History in and around New Orleans.

About the Artist

Melodious Thunk began before the hurricane as a community project in the Crescent City by a small group of New Orleans artists hoping to record the Sunday 2nd Line Parades. Over the years we’ve grown as we’ve ventured round the world into other sonic communities filled with like minded folks enamored by the exhilarating sounds of music in the street. In our collective travels we’ve found beauty and wonder follow vibrant sound through dance, costumes and stories, with each sonic event presenting an occasion to showcase the unusual and spectacular. We immerse in the culture and then bring the full spectrum of rhythms to your eyes and ears in new ways through audio, video, photography and interactive web content. We believe the great sonic waves of the world should be heard whether musicians are dancing, standing or walking. That musicians shouldn’t have to be wealthy, bow down, grovel, get up to their necks in debt to have a platform for their sound to be seen and heard and appreciated. We go out and find the music alive in its element in the streets of the musician’s homes where folks feel comfortable enough to do what they wanna, let go, sing along, have a time. Then we ask the musicians about their sound so they can tell us in their own words what makes their rhythms so magnificent. Our mission is to be a bridge between the music of the street and your eyes and ears by fully documenting both rising artists and master musicians playing authentic, unfiltered rhythms in juke joints, at music festivals, in their homes, their corners, their bars, on their porches and then too, the very much under-documented great moving parades and processions of our time.