Welcome to Unpacked, America 250, a mini series celebrating the music, art, food, and more that makes America, America—in honor of our nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary. The mini series is part of Afar’s “52 Places to Travel in the U.S. This Year" package, and in this second episode, host Aislyn Greene takes us to Washington, D.C. to explore go-go music—the uniquely American sound that’s been moving communities for fifty years.
From Chuck Brown’s groundbreaking fusion of funk, hip-hop, and Latin rhythms in the 1970s to today’s global collaborations, this episode shares how a local D.C. music scene survived criminalization, gentrification, and decades of attacks to become the official music of the nation’s capital.
Transcript
Natalie Hopkinson: Go-go music, when you hear it, it’s strange but familiar—all the layers of percussion and cowbells and timbales. And so go-go is a lot of things. It is a genre of music created by Chuck Brown in the mid-70s. It’s a brand of funk with hip-hop, mixed with Latin rhythms. It’s party music.
Aislyn: That’s Dr. Natalie Hopkinson, or as her daughter calls her, Dr. Go-Go. She’s a professor at American University and the chief curator of the new Go-Go Museum & Café in Washington, D.C.
For the last 50 years, go-go has been the sound of Washington, D.C. where communities gather at clubs and backyards, creating a rhythm that has survived everything thrown at it.
I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked America 250, where we celebrate the stories, the spirit, and yes, the music that makes America, America.
Natalie became obsessed with go-go in the early 2000s when she was an arts writer for the Washington Post.
Natalie: I started covering youth culture in Prince George’s County, Maryland; they were sort of discovering it and creating a whole new movement around go-go, called Bounce Beat and they had these crazy dances. It was just such an energy and a vitality, like people were dancing so hard and like flying through the air and it was so creative.
Aislyn: To understand go-go, you have to understand D.C. in the 1970s when the district became known as “Chocolate City,” so named after the funk song from the band Parliament, which was super popular in D.C. in the ’70s.
Natalie: This is post–civil rights movement. Marion Barry emerges as a leader in the late ’70s. These are like former civil rights activists and they created these programs, like the summer job program. And they supported, like, marching bands in schools.
Aislyn: Imagine D.C. public schools supporting neighborhood bands, summer jobs that actually paid kids to play music. And a whole generation of young people learning instruments in their communities.
Natalie: Similar to New Orleans, [it] created this culture where most neighborhoods had a band. And then you could come out of the marching band. All these people get trained in doing these instruments. And so your neighborhood, that’s what you’d do, you’d start your little go-go band in your neighborhood.
Aislyn: From school bands to neighborhood stages, go-go became the sound of young Black D.C. creating its own musical language. But by the 1980s, that musical language was under attack.
Natalie: D.C. had a reputation by the ’80s, you know, as being the murder capital. It was one of the most lucrative drug markets in the United States. And because go-go was the most popular music, some of that got into the clubs, outside the clubs. And so there was some local politicians who believed that, well, it’s the go-go that’s the problem. And if we just shut down the music, and we stop kids from going to these clubs, then we’ll be able to keep them safe.
Aislyn: In 1987, D.C. passed a curfew law targeting go-go.
Natalie: I understand the impulse to do something, but the conga is absolutely innocent, you know? And, you know, the guitar player had nothing to do with it. You know, like, it’s not the music.
Aislyn: But go-go survived. It went underground, yes, it moved to Maryland, but it kept evolving. And in 2019 when a resident of a luxury condo threatened to sue one of the last remaining businesses that played go-go music in the streets, it sparked a movement.
Natalie: People took to the street. They had had enough. And so we were able to use that movement to push to make go-go the official music of Washington, D.C., um, and also to push for the creation of the Go-Go Museum.
Aislyn: Natalie and Ronald Moten, an activist and now the CEO of the museum, played key roles in this.
Natalie: We co-led a movement called Don’t Mute D.C. to protect go-go music. It had been criminalized, it had been disrespected, and really a whole generation of young people had been cut off from it.
Aislyn: And that’s where the museum comes in. While they have cool artifacts like DJ Kool’s touring jacket, Little Benny’s horn, and other amazing acquisitions, the museum is really community oriented and it’s totally interactive, just like go-go.
Natalie: I will say the museum is a go-go. Like it’s also a go-go. Like it’s also a place where the music is created live. Like there’s a live performance stage out back, there’s a recording studio in the lower level. So you actually are in the go-go.
Aislyn: Interactive exhibits let you trace how go-go influenced hip-hop and in return, how hip-hop samples go-go music.
Natalie: You have the original Chuck Brown “Bustin Loose” song, and then you play Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” where he sampled it. And then you play like the other three or four times that that song has been sampled, right?
Aislyn: The museum represents both the past and the future of go-go.
Natalie: Having this museum like a bricks-and-mortar physical home and place is like the ultimate, I won’t say finale ’cause we have so much more to go. But it’s a really important stop along the journey for the music, you know, to like have that respect of like, this is a museum that’s dedicated to it and people are coming from around the world to, like, experience this culture because it has value, you know? And it’s worth studying.
Aislyn: Because go-go has remained uniquely D.C. throughout all these years.
Natalie: It’s a local industry. It’s a collection of Black-owned mom-and-pop businesses. So the whole creative economy from the fashion, which we have exhibits about, to the soundmen, to the promoters, to the security firms, to the, you know, marketers, everybody’s Black.
So one of the other definitions we have, we say, is one of the only Black popular music forms that have not been colonized. Hip-hop, it experienced a lot of the same criminalization, but it was protected because it was making a lot of big, multinational companies money. Go-go has been local, you know, stubbornly so, and like, they didn’t have a lot of advocates.
Aislyn: But now with the establishment of go-go, as the music of D.C. and the creation of the museum, a lot of that has changed. And the museum is building connections beyond D.C.
Natalie: We had started doing this play date series, where we started with New Orleans, which is one of a close cousin of—like brass bands in New Orleans are analogous to go-go bands in D.C.
Recently, we just added Memphis to the chat. So we had like this bluesman we met in Memphis and he was coming in and playing. So, you know, I can sit here and write about, “Oh well this is what’s similar in the social structure, you know, and this is what scholars do,” and it’s important and I do do it. But it’s so much more fun to just see it happen, you know, like to see these cultures combine and find what’s common about them and what’s different and having them watch and learn from each other.
Aislyn: Go-go music continues to evolve with help from artists like Black Alley.
Natalie: They’ve done a lot of wonderful global collaborations. They do a lot of really fantastic original music. They have a rock edge to them. They have a female, uh, lead. Casey Williams is, she’s fantastic.
Aislyn: Black Alley represents go-go’s global reach. They collaborate with musicians from around the world while keeping that essential D.C. groove. And then there’s Michelle Blackwell, another powerful voice carrying go-go into new territories.
Michelle’s sophomore album, Go-Go ish, (1st Set) includes a collaboration with the Ghanaian artist Epixode. She’s even written a book, a novel called Love-n-Go-Go, to further the genre.
Then there are new bands forming: TOB, Experience Band, Pock3t, and there are covers that show go-go’s endless creativity.
Natalie: CCB, they just did a, um, “All I Want for Christmas” cover, a go-go [version]. Google it. Listen to it. It’s fantastic. I love it. I’ve listened to it a million times.
Aislyn: For the classics, Dr. Go-Go still points to the foundations.
Natalie: Backyard Band is like, you know, my heart. And Rare Essence, you know, is one of the original go-go bands that started in the mid-70s. They’re still kicking it and doing amazing, like, they’re great for the live shows. And then you can’t ever go wrong with Chuck Brown. He’s the godfather, he’s the creator.
Aislyn: Where does it go from here? Nobody really knows. But Natalie does know one thing.
Natalie: It’s just been a real joyful thing. I’m so happy to have good news outta Washington, D.C., and we need it. It’s medicine. People need to, like, listen to the music and dance. This is, like, healing, [a] needed space of just being in community with each other as humans.
Aislyn: For Unpacked America 250, I’m Aislyn Greene. Keep listening, keep learning. And if you find yourself in D.C., you gotta find the go-go. And please support the incredible artists we feature today. A special thanks to Black Alley and Michelle Blackwell. In the show notes, you’ll find links to all of their music, their websites, and to a complete go-go playlist.
