Big Freedia
Bounce! Sexy. Sweaty. Energetic. Addictive. Chaotic. Thumping. Bumping. Humping. Syncopated. Bootylicious. Unbridled. Feminine. Ridiculous. Salty. Infectious. Confusing. Exhilarating. Vulgar. Thrilling. Percussive. Wild. Zeitgeisty. Big Freedia!
Born Freddie Ross, Big Freedia first performed in Athens at Farm 255 in February of this year, bringing the town a taste of the sensation known as New Orleans bounce music for a much-talked-about dance party. Largely an underground phenomenon until very recently, bounce music is a repetitious, hyper-sexualized variety of hip-hop that draws heavily on the call-and-response of New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian chants. With an aggressive tour schedule and an even more aggressive live performance, Big Freedia has quickly become one of the most visible ambassadors of the form.
So: Dancefloor instructions! Wave your hands in the air? No. Wave your ass anywhere. (Maybe even everywhere.) The democratic spirit of a Big Freedia show is one of its most enticing qualities. Freedia on a stage without her crowd would be much less interesting, as would the audience without Big Freedia to direct them.
Also on the bill for Wednesday’s performance is Five Knives, a young band out of Nashville that giddily tap-dances all over the notion of genre distinctions. Drum machines and a remix aesthetic characterize the band’s electro-pop-punk, and lead vocalist Anna Worstell goes toe-to-toe with Freedia for love of spectacle. Backed by her group of boys in masks, she commands her band to create a noise that’s part Daft Punk, part preteen punk and part singsongy schoolyard chants. If M.I.A. were an angry teen from Tennessee who grew up on crunchy emo guitar, maybe she would’ve turned out a bit like this.
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