Go-go live : the musical life and death of a chocolate city / Natalie Hopkinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hopkinson, Natalie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Go-go (Music)--Washington (D.C.)--History and criticism.

Go-go (Music).

Go-go (Music)--Social aspects--Washington (D.C.).

Social aspects.

African Americans.

Manners and customs.

Washington (D.C.).

African Americans--Washington (D.C.)--Music--20th century.

African Americans--Washington (D.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century.

Genre:

Music.

Physical Description:

xvi, 213 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Go-go is the conga drum-inflected black popular music that emerged in Washington, D.C., during the 1970s. The guitarist Chuck Brown, the "Godfather of Go-Go," created the music by mixing sounds borrowed from church and the blues with the funk and flavor that he picked up playing for a local Latino band. Born in the inner city, amid the charred ruins of the 1968 race riots, go-go generated a distinct culture and an economy of independent, almost exclusively black-owned business that sold tickets to shows and recording of live go-gos. At the peak of its popularity, in the 1980s, go-go could be heard around the capital every night of the week, on college campuses and in crumbling historic theaters, hole-in-the-wall nightclubs, backyards, and city parks.

Go-Go Live is a social history of black Washington told through its go-go music and culture. Encompassing dance moves, nightclubs, and fashion, as well as the voices of artists, fans, business owners, and politicians, Natalie Hopkinson's Washington-based narrative reflects the broader history of race in urban America in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. In the 1990s, the middle class that had left the city for the suburbs in the postwar years began to return. The Chocolate City is in decline, but its heart, D.C.'s distinctive go-go musical culture, continues to beat. On any given night, there's live go-go in the D.C. metro area. Book jacket.

Contents:

Black body politic

Club U

What's happening

Call and response

The archive

The boondocks

Redemption song

Roll call, 1986.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822352006

0822352001

9780822352112

0822352117

OCLC:

757718042