go-go music
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Exclusive: TV One Celebrates Black Music Month and the Sound of D.C. With Go-Go Documentary, The Beat Don't Stop
The sounds of Go-go hit the nation on another level when we all heard those conga drums in the background of “Da Butt” by E.U. (Experience Unlimited) as part of Spike Lee’s School Daze soundtrack. However, I didn’t truly get the purity of Washington, D.C.-native pride until I accumulated a few friends from there, went…
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Bustin’ The Beat: Go-Go Officially Designated As the Music of Washington D.C.
Chuck Brown would be proud. Chocolate City finally – officially – has its own sound, on the books. This week, D.C.’s mayor signed a bill making go-go the official music of Washington. “Today, we are proud to say that DC’s official music will always be Go-Go, because there is no DC without Go-Go and there…
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30 Days of Musical Blackness With VSB, Day 27: Junk Yard Band 'Loose Booty'
Washington, D.C., and its culture absolutely changed my life. I was first introduced to D.C.—outside of the national stories about Marion Barry—in a pre-freshman program the summer before my freshman year at Morehouse College in 1997. A few of the students in the program were from D.C. and they all stood out for their fashion…
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Beat Your Feet or Step Out the Way: D.C. Council Introduces Bill to Make Go-Go 'the Official Music of the District'
For almost 50 years, go-go has been the unofficial music of Washington, D.C. The former hallmark of Saturday nights in the metro area (also known as the DMV), go-go forebears like Chuck Brown and Rare Essence, and later acts like E.U., Backyard Band, and Mambo Sauce provided the soundtrack to family reunions, cookouts, pre-games, and,…
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#MoeChella Is What Happens When Natives Push Back Against Colonizers; Thousands Converge on City for Go-Go
For one night, Washington, D.C., took off its hard bottoms, dress pants, work suits, office dresses and let its pinned-up braids down, to collectively sing “Pretty Girls” all over 14th and U streets in a symbolic go-go gathering that stomped on the colonizers’ graves. It was brilliantly dubbed #MoeChella, a mashup of Coachella (an uber-white…
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D.C. Fights Back Against Colonizers Who Want to Ban Go-Go Music From an Iconic City Corner
Back in 1498, a few years after Christopher Columbus pillaged the Caribbean and before he set sail to Trinidad, Columbus landed in the District of Columbia. He asked where he could get a good half-smoke, and the people told him to go to Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street. There Columbus and his crew dined…