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Botkin Lectures >> Go-Go in DC Flyer
Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series: Texts from the Event Flyers
Go-Go in Washington, D.C.
featuring Ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
West Dining Room
6th Floor, James Madison Building
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE Washington, DC
Thea Austen contact (202-707-1743)
Closest metro station is Capitol South on the Orange/Blue lines.
Go-Go in Washington, D. C.
Go-Go is a form of African American popular music that emerged in the
District of Columbia and neighboring Prince Georges County about 30 years
ago. Because it remains popular in the Washington, D.C. region and remains
the most regionally-focused form of vernacular music in the United
States.
Chuck Brown is the man who brought all of the musical and cultural
elements together to create this distinctive sound.
For those who have never heard it, go-go music contains the following
ten characteristics:
1) African American
2) D.C.- based
3) Contemporary & popular
4) Rooted in funk & hip hop
5) Male dominated
6) Highly syncopated
7) Percussion-driven by a variety of instruments
8) Thrives in live performances
9) Utilizes call and response
10) Extended performances, sometimes groups in “suites.”
Go-Go is more than music, it reflects the experiences of black Americans
living in Washington D.C. since the middle 1970s. Among the District’s
black citizens under the age of 50 go-go is often matter of pride. When
Trouble Funk opens a show by asking “who we gonna put on display
tonight?,” Rare Essence inquires “where my troopers at?,” or
Back Yard wants to know “who’s in the house?” Everyone
wants to be recognized. Much like enthusiastic elementary school children
who know the answer to a question and are begging to be called upon, the
crowd’s response transcends mere enthusiasm and enters the realm
of the ecstatic. This ardent testimony draws the audience into the show,
personalizes the experience, and promotes racial & neighborhood pride.
Perhaps even more importantly go go provides a voice for members of D.C.’s
often overlooked, much maligned, and truly disenfranchised African American
community. Its younger members identify with go go musicians (perhaps even
more so than with rappers because go go is distinctly D.C. while rap doesn’t
speak quite so locally) in much the same way that blues once provided a
voice for the black community. In D.C. you are at least as likely to hear
Trouble Funk, Junk Yard, or Chuck Brown than D’Angelo or the Nasty
Gang streaming from automobile speakers bearing the new “Taxation
Without Representation” license plates and being driven by an African
American citizen who has come of age in the past 25 years.
Where ever black folk live in or around our Nation’s Capital you
will hear groups with names like Junk Yard Band, Lissen Band, Northeast
Groovers (NEG), Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Backyard Band, Familiar
Faces, Northeast Groovers, and Little Benny, and others streaming out of
cars as they drive by, from open windows, and, if the headphone wearer
has it cranked way up, on the Metro. The sound of go-go music can be heard
throughout Washington, D.C. and Prince Georges County, where the population
is predominately black American. Go-Go’s funky and very black sounds
filter out to nearby Charles County, into Baltimore, and sometimes even
to Richmond, VA. But, except for the brothers and sisters and a few other
enlightened people who have lived in Chocolate City and have first-hand
experience with go-go, the power of this music doesn’t extend much
further.
Kip Lornell, who teaches in the Music Department at The George Washington
University is co-author with Charles C. Stephenson Jr.of the The Beat!
Go-Go’s Fusion of Funk and Hip Hop., will talk about the development
of go go as well as it’s social and cultural meanings to African
American Washingtonians.
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