Step inside the new Go-Go Museum and Café in Washington’s historic Anacostia neighborhood and you’ll be greeted by Anwar “Big G” Glover, the front man of the Backyard Band—one of the myriad musical groups that has defined the sound of the city for nearly half a century.
Glover, musical director of the museum, which opened on February 19, is not there in the flesh. Rather, a large screen that’s part of what resembles a giant ATM produces a hologram of Big G, allowing visitors to enjoy virtual interactions with the musician-actor. Glover’s image answers preloaded questions about the museum or, via artificial intelligence, queries about other topics such as his acting career, including a meaty role as Slim Charles on the seminal HBO series The Wire.
The hologram sets the vibe for the lively 8,000-square-foot museum, which houses the world’s only collection dedicated to the celebration, study, and preservation of go-go. The space includes a basement recording studio, a backyard pavilion for live performances, and 16 interactive digital exhibits that tell the story of the genre and its cultural and political significance to DC.
Visitors can use digital spray cans to tag a graffiti wall, then print their designs on a T-shirt; peruse the go-go glossary that lines the bathroom walls; enjoy grilled mumbo wings and other local flavors in the café; and listen to songs from Nelly, Salt-N-Pepa, Beck, and more featuring sampled go-go beats.
“You can sit down and read a book or get up and move around and interact with history,” says chief curator Natalie Hopkinson, professor of media, democracy, and society in AU’s School of Communication, who cofounded the museum with Ron Moten, a community activist and music promoter. “There’s a whole other way for learning and telling stories.”
Chuck Brown, a native North Carolinian who moved to DC at age six, is considered the godfather of go-go. He was performing with his band the Soul Searchers at the Maverick Room in the Edgewood neighborhood in Northeast in 1976 when he encouraged the musicians to keep playing between songs. The charismatic Brown engaged the crowd in jubilant rounds of call-and-response, a signature element of go-go.
The funky, exuberant groove—which blends Afro-Latin rhythms with layers of horns and lots of percussion, including congas and cowbells—quickly became the soundtrack of DC and the heartbeat of its cultural identity, says Hopkinson, a former Washington Post reporter and author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City.
“It’s party music, a spiritual-political force—[and] one of the only Black musical genres that has not been colonized,” she says.
The idea for the museum started in 2009, when Moten spoke passionately about the need for such a space during a go-go awards event he coproduced at the Washington Convention Center. Just two decades earlier, the DC Council had passed a law banning people under 18 from staying at a go-go bar past 11:30 p.m. on weekdays and after 1 a.m. on weekends and holidays, as some people associated the music with violence.
“We were kind of criminalized at the time,” says Moten who, along with Hopkinson, helped champion 2019’s Don’t Mute DC movement, which succeeding in reversing the bans. “I knew having a go-go museum would give us credibility and would preserve our culture and history.”
In 2020, Moten hosted a virtual concert that drew 80,000 viewers to kickstart a campaign to build the museum, which was funded by about $2.5 million in city grants, $200,000 from an anonymous donor, and small gifts from an army of community members. “Piece by piece, grant by grant, brick by brick, he got this to where it is,” Hopkinson says of Moten, the museum’s CEO.
DC mayor Muriel Bowser, SPA/MPP ’00, also played a crucial role in making the museum a reality when, in February 2020, she signed legislation designating go-go the official music of Washington.
“There is no DC without go-go, and there is no go-go without DC,” Bower said at the time. “Go-go music is a creative force that has inspired generations of Washingtonians socially, culturally, and artistically, and this legislation will empower us to preserve and celebrate our native sound.”
Bowser and Glover—the actual person, not the hologram—were among those who attended the museum’s soft launch on November 18 during Go-Go Preservation Week. Community members danced to music from Glover and the Backyard Band, who performed on stage with a painting of Brown in his signature fedora and sunglasses.
The past was present—and the vibes were right.
“Go-go music,” Hopkinson said to the crowd, “is the most powerful stuff on the planet.”
New to go-go? No-no problem.
Bust loose with 12 of Hopkinson’s favorite tracks:
Chuck Baby, Chuck Brown and KK Brown
Lift Every Voice and Sing, Black Alley
Byb Hello, Backyard Band
The Word, Junkyard Band
Run Joe, Chuck Brown
Overnight Scenario, Rare Essence
Keep It Gangsta, Backyard Band
The Clapping Song, TOB
All I Want for Christmas, CCB
Optimistic, CCB featuring J’TA
Crew, New Impressionz
Never has a bathroom been so bumpin’.
In 1984, the late Max Kidd, founder of T.T.E.D. (tolerance, trust, eternal dedication, and determination) Records and producer of the 1986 film Good to Go—a crime thriller that used DC’s go-go scene as its musical backdrop—created a glossary that was inserted into cassette tapes to teach listeners about go-go culture. Hopkinson and Moten honored Kidd, a giant of the genre, by papering the walls of the Go-Go Museum’s restroom with excerpts from the glossary. Here are a few of Hopkinson’s favorite entries:
Bamma: someone who is unaware that their dress is outdated; someone from the country who has not adjusted to city life
Bumpin’: it’s bad, it’s super-dooper, it’s terrific; used interchangeably with hittin’ and holdin’
Bustin’ loose (originated by Chuck Brown, Et al.): letting it all hang out; breaking out; acting crazy; having big fun
Crankin’: performing go-go music at full potential; go-go music at its best
E.U. Freeze (originated by Experience Unlimited): a split-second pause in go-go music when the crowd strikes different poses and freezes
Go-go (music): full-bodied funk that leads with bass drums, heavy percussion, cowbells, and congas with tasty timbales and strong brassy horns; a nonstop form of dance music where there are no breaks between songs
Go-go (the scene): a traveling party moving from high schools to recreation and community centers, skating rinks, or any dance hall where go-go bands perform for young adults
Loud talker: the conductor or liaison between the audience and the band
Mug: your face or facial features; your attitude, according to your facial expression
Raw: go-go at its best; a natural inner-city funk sound
Syce it on up: ad-libbing go-go music; vocal or instrumental changes created on the spot
The pocket: go-go’s distinctive syncopated rhythm; when a band is “in the pocket,” all the instruments are locked together in a tight, infectious groove