Go-go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City - Hardcover

Natalie Hopkinson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822352001 ISBN 13: 9780822352006

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2012

Synopsis

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 flavour 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 businesses, which sold tickets to shows and performance recordings. 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 theatres, hole-in-the-wall nightclubs, back yards, 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 post-war years, began to return. Gentrification drove up property values and pushed go-go into D.C.'s suburbs. 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.

About this title

Review:

"From Club U to the H St. corridor to Prince George's County, go-go is the local music of Washington. At music halls, packed dance clubs, and on the street, the syncopated rhythms of rototoms and congas fill the space behind the shouted call-and-response vocals. "Tell me wh-wh-wh-where y'all from!" goes the classic go-go refrain. A new book by Natalie Hopkinson, Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City (Duke University Press), quotes the poet Thomas Sayers Ellis as saying that go-go constitutes the most "radical opposition to English syntax." Go-go is simultaneously the "black CNN," informative and historically aware, and a place to "Beat Ya Feet" in raucous and hard-partying fashion, Hopkinson explains." --David Wescott, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1st 2012

"Black Washington, D.C., has a famously rich history and culture. Natalie Hopkinson has an established reputation as one of the most sophisticated commentators on contemporary black culture in the capital city. Go-Go Live is not only a fascinating account of a musical culture, but also a social and cultural history of black Washington in the post-Civil Rights era." Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity "Natalie Hopkinson knows the music, the heartbeat, and the people of Washington well, but Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City is much more than a book about D.C.'s indigenous sound. It is a vital, lively, and ultimately inspiring look at the evolution of an American city." George Pelecanos "Natalie Hopkinson's Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City is a terrific and important piece of work. Music, race, and the city are three key pivot points of our society, and Hopkinson pulls them together in a unique and powerful way. I have long adored Washington, D.C.'s go-go music. The book helped me understand the history of the city and the ways that it reflects the whole experience of race and culture in our society. It puts music front and center in the analysis of our urban experience, something which has been too long in coming." - Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and Director, Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto Rotman School of Management "Go-Go Live is not just a fantastic read, but THE definitive study of DC's most overlooked and unheralded art form. Hopkinson captures the soul of the city." --Dana Flor, director of The Nine Lives of Marion Barry

About the Author:

Natalie Hopkinson, a contributing editor of TheRoot.com, lectures at Georgetown University and directs the Future of the Arts and Society project as a fellow of the Interactivity Foundation. She is the author, with Natalie Y. Moore, of Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation. A former writer and editor at the Washington Post, Hopkinson has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and TheAtlantic.com and done commentary for NPR and the BBC.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0822352001
• ISBN 13: 9780822352006
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232