Today’s Day Thread is about go-go, a subgenre of funk/dance music that was labeled the official music of Washington, DC in 2020. In the 1970s, Chuck Brown started taking funk music, layering an Afro-Latin beat over it, and blending the songs together: go-go songs never actually stop, and at a go-go you hear several hours of music blending into each other. Go-go is characterized by its specific percussion beats: a music theorist would refer to a syncopated pattern of emphasis on twos and threes, but most go-go musicians can’t read sheet music, they just feel the go-go swing. Every go-go band is driven by the drum set, the congas, a set of unique miniature congas, timbales, rototoms, cowbells, and whatever other percussion you can find. They also can have multiple keyboard, guitars, horns, and vocalists, who talk with the audience to keep them engaged with the music. Go-go has a rich history in DC, and after fading a bit in the 2000s and 2010s (due to increasing gentrification and a spurious association of go-go clubs with crime), local activists with the #Don’tMuteDC movement have worked to bring back go-go’s space in the cultural sphere. (brief history on this from a friend of mine) Since then, there has been an active effort to make go-go popular among the whole city, not just the underground clubs: you can go-go at the usual places, but the city government and various arts institutions have been legitimizing go-go music in a new way.

So where can I listen to go-go? I am no go-go expert, because I’m fairly new to go-go, but I am one of the leaders of a go-go band with the purpose of maintaining the future of go-go: we train high school students and perform for those new to the city who have not seen go-go before. We are having our first show in two days and playing every day through the 18th: here is a playlist of some of our songs! (which does include some songs we are covering in go-go style, but doesn’t include our originals)

Happy Day Thread!