At various times between the early 1980s and early 2010s, nearly every Black neighborhood in the District had its own fledgling go-go band. Early on, these bands were made up of children and teenagers who learned music in the public schools and honed their skills in summer recreation programs. In many cases, the best of them went on to join or form some of the DMV’s most beloved go-go bands, including Rare Essence, Trouble Funk, and Experience Unlimited. But over time, as funding for DCPS’s music education decreased, fewer new go-go and even bouncebeat bands appeared around the DMV.
With the new Mobile Go-Go Museum, longtime community activist Ron Moten will once again bring go-go to the city’s neighborhoods with educational interactive exhibits within the bus and performances by go-go bands on its rooftop hydraulic stage.
Last Wednesday, Nov. 16, Moten celebrated a symbolic groundbreaking for his ambitious Go-Go Museum in Anacostia, at 1920 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE, along with an unveiling and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Mobile Go-Go Museum. While the museum building, which is projected to open in spring of 2024, will document and celebrate go-go’s remarkable history, the Mobile Go-Go Museum will bring the go-go beat back to the city’s streets.
“Because it’s mobile, it’ll be able to come to all the hoods,” said DJ Flexx, a veteran in the local go-go scene, as he surveyed the Mobile Go-Go Museum bus on Wednesday. “This is historic because it’s been a long time trying to get our music recognized the way it should be in our city. … This is a critical time for go-go, because it’s time to pass the torch, and we gotta make sure that we lay the foundation the correct way so that go-go is enshrined forever.”
The mood at the groundbreaking, held in the outdoor Secret Garden behind the Go-Go Museum building, was celebratory. Attendees included multiple city officials as well as go-go artists and fans. Even film director Spike Lee was on hand, as Mayor Muriel Bowser declared Nov. 16 “Spike Lee Day” in recognition of his role in elevating go-go culture. Lee featured EU performing “Da Butt” in his 1988 film, School Daze, and that single rose to No. 1 on the Billboard R&B singles chart that April, vaulting EU into international stardom. As Bowser praised Lee in her remarks, Lee nudged EU bandleader Greogory “Sugar Bear” Elliott, who was sitting next to him and responded with his trademark “Owww!”
Philip Pannell, executive director of the Anacostia Coordinating Council, brought both religious fervor and rhymes, saying, “Good afternoon, my go-go sisters and brothers. Today’s historic day is the day that the Lord and Chuck Brown have made. May we be glad and rejoice in it.” Later in his speech, Pannell explained some of the benefits of the go-go beat: “New York may have Broadway, Los Angeles may have Hollywood, New Orleans may have jazz, but D.C. has go-go … and go-go is definitely guaranteed to put more dip in your hips, more cut in your strut, and more glide in your stride.”
Other speakers reminded the audience about the vast wealth discrepancy between the District’s Black and White residents. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton used her comments to address our continuing lack of voting rights. “Hometown D.C. has always had a vibrant musical and cultural life, but the overbearing presence of official Washington, and I’m part of both, often smothered the identity of hometown Washington, as much as it trampled our rights as American citizens,” she said.
As the speeches continued, the overflow crowd of go-go luminaries and their fans were crammed on the sidewalk in front of the building, where the Mobile Museum was parked. One exterior side of the bus is decorated with various go-go chants depicted in a style reminiscent of the colorful posters made by Baltimore’s Globe Printing Corporation that have long advertised go-go concerts. The other sides feature images of multiple go-go stars, including genre founder Chuck Brown, Sugar Bear, Backyard Band leader Anwan “Big G” Glover, vocalist Kimberly “Ms. Kim” Graham, and Be’la Dona’s “Sweet” Cherie Mitchell, the only woman musician to play go-go with Brown.
In between hugs and selfies with countless fans, Big G explained the importance of bringing go-go back to neighborhoods where young people lack opportunities. “Once upon a time, every neighborhood had a go-go band and the violence wasn’t that high. Now the kids, nobody don’t have nothin’ to do. They don’t have no guidance or nothing, so you got a lot of violence erupting throughout the city,” he said.
Big G will serve as the Go-Go Museum’s Music Director, working to bring young artists into the museum to learn music production as well as other career options within the creative arts. “The music been taken out of the schools, and we gotta put it back,” he said. “But this is a start today with the ribbon cutting right here at the Go-Go Museum, and we gotta keep pushing. We have to keep everything going in our community and keep the future of go-go going. The future is bright.”
The ribbon cutting was accompanied by the go-go chant “Southeast! South-Southeast!” originated by Rare Essence and later popularized by DJ Flexx in his “South East Anthem.” As a DJ played “Da Butt,” the members of Backyard climbed the ladder to the Mobile Museum’s roof for a brief performance of their popular hits.
Moten first publicly announced his desire to create a museum celebrating D.C.’s homegrown funk at the 2009 Go-Go Awards at the Washington Convention Center. Since then, much has happened in the culture. Brown died in 2012, countless new bands formed, and in 2019, the Don’t Mute DC and Long Live Go-Go movements formed after Shaw’s Central Communications, better known as the Metro PCS store, was forced to temporarily shut down the speakers that played go-go outside the shop for decades. The silencing of the music was the last straw for a community that has seen its music ignored and suppressed for decades. Then, in Feb. 2020, the city passed legislation designating go-go the official music of Washington, D.C., which crystallized a path forward for the museum to seek funding.
According to Moten, the mobile museum, which cost $300,000, and the building, which will cost an estimated $2 million, will be funded by public and private sources, including a $200,000 gift from an anonymous corporate donor as well as funding from Events DC and the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment. The Mobile Museum’s hydraulic stage cost more than the entire bus, he said, describing its sound system as compact but “world class.” Longtime EU engineer Bobby Marshall helped develop the system, and Brian Rashad, husband of the late “First Lady of Go-Go” Maiesha Rashad, will be running the sound.
The interior of the Mobile Go-Go Museum, which was designed by the Creative JunkFood multimedia studio, features interactive digital exhibits covering musical elements including a hologram of Big G answering basic questions on the culture, such as “What is go-go?” and “What is the pocket?” Another section explores the relationship between go-go and hip-hop, as many rap classics were constructed with samples. (Trouble Funk, for example, have been sampled more than 200 times.)
Securing Big G’s involvement was crucial. “He’s a fixture in go-go that young people and older people can relate to,” explained Moten. “Wouldn’t be no movement in go-go without Big G’s advocacy and the crank of the Backyard Band. He’s a prime example that you can fall down and get back up, and that’s what our children and community need to see right now.”
For years, nightly go-go events, including teen nightclubs, kept young people off the streets. Still, at various points, particularly during the mid-1980s and again in the mid-1990s, violence found its way to go-go concerts, which to this day can attract hundreds, even thousands of fans. Inevitably, go-go took the blame. “Go-go was criminalized, and they shut down all the nightclubs and took go-go out to the schools, so young people weren’t exposed to it,” said Moten. “That’s one of the most important things about this museum. We want to teach young people go-go again and help them create.”
Like many others in the go-go community, Moten remains convinced that engaging young people with go-go can reduce violence across the city. “We need to give young people a positive platform to get attention,” he said. “It used to be cool to be in a go-go band … Now we have 12-year-olds robbing people thinking that’s cool. We got to change that.”
TOB’s “Lil” Chris Proctor, who has become one of the culture’s most outspoken advocates in recent years, has often said that go-go literally saved his life. “I was on the wrong path at one point in time, but starting the band got me on the right track,” Proctor told City Paper at the event. “You can’t save every kid, but you can break through to some of them through music. … With the Mobile Go-Go Museum, we can bring the go-go to them. Today is a marvelous day for go-go. Go-go for the win.”
Go-go artist Charles “Shorty Corleone” Garris, who recently put together a go-go musical at Georgetown University, Making the Go-Go Band, explained to City Paper that new ways of presenting go-go are crucial. “Taking a mobile go-go museum to the people versus waiting for the people to come is genius,” he said. “This helps educate the young people and inspires the next generation of creatives to visualize themselves having an opportunity to be a part of the culture.”
The Museum will be located in the building that has long been occupied by Moten’s Check It Enterprises, a social enterprise run by former gang members. Since the pandemic, the space has been hosting go-go concerts in the Secret Garden. Currently, Moten is aiming for an opening date of April 8, 2024, which marks the fifth anniversary of Don’tMuteDC. (His partner in DontMuteDC, American University professor Natalie Hopkinson, will serve as the museum’s chief curator.)
Moten has been organizing mobile go-go concerts on flatbed trucks since the early 2010s, and now he will continue the tradition with the Mobile Go-Go Museum, which, just days after its unveiling featured a rooftop performance by TOB at Saturday’s celebration of the renaming of Good Hope Road to Marion Barry Avenue SE.
He plans to apply for grants and explore other revenue sources that will fund the Mobile Go-Go Museum visits to area schools and various cultural events. “From the very beginning, it was a lot of people that made this happen. It was a whole beehive,” said Moten. “This is the one time that I will say our elected officials came together as one to make some good happen.
“This is definitely one of my proudest moments,” he added. “I’ve never had anything in my life harder than this, but nothing worth having comes easy.”