This Woman Playing Tambourine Along To French Montana At Essence Fest Will Give You Life

Rosalie “Lady Tambourine” Washington has been a fixture of New Orleans’ live music scene for decades.

July 05, 2016

Puff Daddy & the Family were in New Orleans over Fourth of July weekend to headline the 2016 Essence Music Festival in a lineup that also included Kendrick Lamar, Mariah Carey, and Maxwell among others. For the set, Puff brought along French Montana, who performed his 2013 hit "Pop That." A video taken of a woman in the crowd playing along on the tambourine, and keeping perfect time, with the club anthem during French's set has since gone viral.

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The woman in question, Rosalie "Tambourine Lady" Washington, has actually been a fixture in the New Orleans live music scene for the better part of two decades. Washington is a regular performer, both scheduled and impromptu, at New Orleans churches, nightclubs, and festivals, but she first made a name for herself in the early 1990s as a constant presence at the Gospel Tent at New Orleans' Jazz Fest. Since then, Washington has performed at Essence Fest with Stevie Wonder, and also had a small part in the Beyoncé-starring film The Fighting Temptations.

Washington's spotlight-stealing presence has, at times, proved complicated: she was blocked from playing in the Gospel Tent at Jazz Fest in 2007, but went on to play her own set at the festival in 2008 in what would be her last appearance at Jazz Fest. Speaking to The Times-Picayune in a 2008 profile, Washington said of splitting the limelight with male performers, "I tell them the reason there aren't that many women musicians is because somebody had to stop and give birth to them." Washington continues to make her energy felt at Essence Fest and other venues around the city of New Orleans. See more clips of Rosalie "Lady Tambourine" Washington playing the tambourine below.

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This Woman Playing Tambourine Along To French Montana At Essence Fest Will Give You Life