Go-go is a subgenre associated with funk that
originated in the Washington, D.C., area during
the mid-1960s to late-'70s.
It remains primarily popular in the area as
a uniquely regional music style.
A great number of bands contributed to the
early evolution of the genre, but the Young
Senators, Black Heat, and singer-guitarist
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers are credited
with having developed most of the hallmarks
of the style.
Inspired by artists such as the groups formerly
mentioned, go-go is a blend of funk, rhythm
and blues, and early hip-hop, with a focus
on lo-fi percussion instruments and funk-style
jamming in place of dance tracks, although
some sampling is used.
As such, it is primarily a dance hall music
with an emphasis on live audience call and
response.
Go-go rhythms are also incorporated into street
percussion.
In technical terms, "Go-go's essential beat
is characterized by a syncopated, dotted rhythm
that consists of a series of quarter and eighth
notes, quarter, eighth, quarter)... which
is underscored most dramatically by the bass
drum and snare drum, and the hi-hat... [and]
is ornamented by the other percussion instruments,
especially by the conga drums, timbales, and
hand-held cowbells."
Unique to go-go is an instrumentation with
3 standard Congas and 2 "Junior Congas", 8"
and 9" wide and about half as tall as the
standard Congas, a size rare outside of go-go.
They were introduced to Rare Essence by Tyrone
Williams -aka- Jungle Boogie in the early
days when they couldn't afford enough full
sized Congas, and are ubiquitous ever since.
A swing rhythm is often implied.
Another important attribute in go-go is call-and-response
vocals with the crowd in concert.
History
Origins
Although Chuck Brown is known as "The Godfather
of Go-go" and his tremendous influence in
this music is unmatched, Go-go is a musical
movement that cannot be traced back to any
one person, as there were so many bands that
flourished during the beginning of this era
that they collectively created the sound that
is considered Go-go of today.
Groups such as The Young Senators, Black Heat,
Aggression, Brute, And The Echos, Tommy Vann
& The Professionals, The Mixed Breed, Scacy
& The Sound Service, 95th Congress, 100 Years
Time, BlackStone, Experience Unlimited, Sound
Extended, Spectrum, 2000 A.D., Lead Head,
Symba, Distance, Ashante, Kalidescope, The
NoWhere Men, Free Form Experience, The Jaguars,
The Corvettes, The Epsilons, The New Breed,
Lawrence & The Arabians, Sir Joe & The Free
Souls, The Mighty Ascots, Ray Johnson's Esquires,
Sons of Nature, and The Fathers Children,
are just a few of the bands that played great
music during the infancy of Go-go.
In the mid-1960s, "go-go" was the word for
a music club in the local African American
community, as in the common phrase at the
time "going to a go-go" popularized by a million-selling
hit of the same name by The Miracles . Dancers
could expect to hear the latest top 40 hits,
as many as 20 at a time, performed by local
funk, rhythm and blues bands, including Chuck
Brown.
Around this time, The Young Senators, later
known as "The Emperors of Go-go", who were
in fierce competition with Chuck Brown and
Black Heat on the club circuit, became known
for their 1965 hit "Jungle".
Chuck Brown was a fixture on the Washington
and Maryland music scene with his band the
"Los Lotinos" as far back as 1966.
By the mid-1970s he had developed a laid-back,
rhythm-heavy style of funk performed with
one song blending into the next.
The beat was based on one used in Grover Washington,
Jr.'s song "Mr. Magic", though Brown has said
in interviews that both he and Washington
had adapted the beat from a gospel music beat
found in black churches.
Another popular local cover band in the early
1970s, Aggression, would use rhythm breaks
to keep fans dancing while they prepared for
the next song, fixed guitar strings, etc.
As Aggression gained popularity, they started
holding dance contests during the rhythm breaks,
which subsequently grew in length.
The audiences began to look forward to these
contests and the band's style evolved to where
the beat would stop only occasionally during
the course of a show.
In 1976, James Funk, a young DJ who spun at
clubs in between Soul Searchers sets, was
inspired to start a band—called Rare Essence—that
played the same kind of music.
Experience Unlimited who originally formed
in 1974 was a band more influenced by rock,
that started out in the 1970s.
After witnessing Rare Essence in the late-1970s,
they modified their style to incorporate the
go-go beat.
Kurtis Blow's..."Party Time" subsequently
put them on the map to be later tracked down
by Grace Jones and to take the King of Go-Go
Production, Max Kidd to an international level
with Island Records, then on to make their
greatest hit for the soundtrack of School
Daze written, directed & produced by Spike
Lee.
Trouble Funk had its roots in an early 1970s
Top-40 cover band called Trouble Band, then
fronted by drummer, Emmett Nixon.
With the inclusion of Robert 'Dyke' Reed,
Taylor Reed, James Avery, Teebone David, and
Tony Fisher, the band changed its name, and,
in the late 1970s, after seeing the light
at a gig they played with Chuck Brown, they,
too, adopted the go-go beat.
The band was signed to the Sugar Hill Records
label in 1982 and recorded with Kurtis Blow.
Trouble Funk recorded the go-go anthem "Hey,
Fellas."
Go-go's first national chart action came when
Black Heat released their Billboard top 100
hit "No Time To Burn" from their second album
on Atlantic Records in 1974.
They then toured with such national acts as
Earth Wind & Fire, Parliament Funkadelic,
Ohio Players, The Commodores and others.
Later, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers
released their "Bustin' Loose" single in late
1978; it reached the #1 spot on Billboard's
R&B chart and held it for a month during February
and March 1979.
The 1980s
In the 1980s, some go-go bands achieved success,
while others did not.
Trouble Funk put out a few records on New
Jersey-based label Jamtu before signing with
one of the more powerful hip hop label, Sugar
Hill, where it released a six-track EP called
Drop the Bomb in 1982, which included the
hit "Pump Me Up" which had already been a
regional hit years before.
In 1984, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell
heard Chuck Brown's "We Need Some Money" on
the radio in New York, which ultimately led
to him signing some of the brightest stars
of the go-go scene.
Trouble Funk and E.U. were both signed to
Island, while Chuck Brown, Mass Extinction,
Yuggie, Redds and the Boys and Hot, Cold,
Sweat were signed through a distribution deal
between T.T.E.D. and Island subsidiary 4th
& B'way.
Along with the recording contracts Blackwell
was handing out, he also wanted to make a
go-go movie; a D.C.-based version of The Harder
They Come, perhaps.
The resultant film, Good to Go was plagued
with problems: co-director Don Letts was let
go halfway through production, the film became
less about the music and more about drugs
and violence, and despite the fact that most
of the post-production was completed in the
fall of 1985, the film was held for release
until late-summer 1986.
When it did poorly on release, it seemed that
go-go had missed its best chance to break
into the mainstream.
The Junk Yard Band started out in 1980 as
a group of kids from the Barry Farms projects.
Unable to afford instruments for their band,
they fashioned drums out of empty buckets
and traffic cones, tin cans substituted for
timbales, and, in place of a brass section,
they used plastic toy horns.
Adding real instruments to their gear a little
at a time, by 1985 they had joined the ranks
of D.C.'s finest; they were scooped up by
Def Jam, who released a Rick Rubin-produced
single "The Word" in 1986.
Not much happened with that record—at first.
However, within a year or two of its release,
the flipside, "Sardines," had become the group's
signature song; it even performs it in the
1988 film Tougher Than Leather.
Rare Essence signed with Mercury/PolyGram
Records but its one single for that label—"Flipside,"
released in 1986—was unremarkable.
E.U. got its big break in 1986 when it was
booked to play a party celebrating the release
of Spike Lee's debut film, She's Gotta Have
It.
Lee liked what he heard, and tapped the band
to perform a song in his next movie, School
Daze.
"Da Butt" made it all the way to #1 on Billboard's
R&B chart and scored them a Grammy nomination.
Hoping to build on their success, in 1989
they released Livin' Large on Virgin Records.
Two singles from the album made respectable
showings on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop singles
chart but they failed to repeat the success
of "Da Butt."
A second Virgin release, Cold Kickin' It,
came out the following year but failed to
make much of an impression on the national
charts.
1990s–2000s
As time passed, more and more of a hip-hop
influence crept into go-go.
Early MCs like D.C. Scorpio gave way to DJ
Kool, whose 1996 indie release, "Let Me Clear
My Throat"—based on a sample from DJ Mark
the 45 King’s “The 900 Number”—was
picked up by American Recordings and in 1997
became go-go's last certifiable hit single.
As the hip-hop content in go-go increased,
the complexity of the musical arrangements
decreased.
Where bands once featured horn sections and
multiple guitarists in addition to a phalanx
of percussionists, many current go-go bands
have stripped down to just keyboards and percussion.
Another trend is to have a dedicated percussionist
with plastic "wood blocks" performing much
of what used to be handled by the Junior Congas.
There is, however, a retro movement going
back to go-go's original style of marathon
sessions covering currently popular R&B songs.
Bands playing in that style include Suttle
Thoughts, WHAT?
band, and Familiar Faces.
Many of these bands use the term "Grown ’n
Sexy" to indicate a focus on appealing to
audiences over 25.
In 2006 and again in 2007, there was a Grown
and Sexy Category at the WKYS 93.9 Go-Go Awards
ceremony held at DAR Constitution Hall, which
the Familiar Faces won in 2006, and L!ssen
Da Grew^p won in 2007.
Some go-go artists have been able to transition
into other areas of entertainment.
Anwan "Big G" Glover — a founding member
of the Backyard Band — became an actor,
playing Slim Charles on HBO's The Wire.
D.C. band Mambo Sauce also had hits with "Miracles"
and "Welcome To D.C." which both cracked the
Billboard charts.
Welcome to DC also became the official intro
song for all of the Washington Wizards & Mystics
home games and the video for the song was
in rotation on VH1 Soul and BETJ and received
airplay on MTVJams, MTV2, MTVU and BET.
Kevin "Kato" Hammond, former lead guitarist
for Little Benny and the Masters and former
rapper for the band Proper Utensils, started
the online magazine Take Me Out to the Go-Go
in 1996.
In addition to the magazine being a source
of information on go-go shows, it serves as
a community forum in which go-go fans routinely
submit their own articles on issues unique
to the genre.
Take Me Out to the Go-Go has expanded to include
a radio show on GoGoRadio.com, as well as
several YouTube channels, one of the most
notable being XclusiveGoGo.
Additionally, musicians from other genres
of music have incorporated elements of the
go-go aesthetic into their compositions and
stage acts.
Jazz/rock musician Mike Dillon, leads a band
called Go-Go Jungle, often playing long, non-stop
sets that incorporate go-go beats and raps
interspersed with other sub-genres of funk,
jazz, and rock.
Another example is Bob Mintzer's composition
"Go Go" from the Yellowjackets' 2003 release,
Time Squared.
Composer Liza Figueroa Kravinsky composed
the Go-Go Symphony, an original full orchestra
symphony that incorporates the go-go and bounce
beats.
She founded the identically named Go-Go Symphony
ensemble, which performs the Go-Go Symphony
and other mashups of go-go and classical,
sometimes in partnership with other full symphony
orchestras.
The February 21, 2014 world premiere of the
fully orchestrated Go-Go Symphony and similar
pieces, performed with the Capital City Symphony,
received standing ovations and rave reviews
Bounce Beat
In 2003 TCB, a band based in the Washington
area, created a spinoff sound from go-go called
bounce beat.
Bounce beat is a heavier version of its ancestor
that relies on timbales, drums, keyboards
and bass to form its signature sound.
At a time when bands like Backyard, UnCalled
4, and Raw Image were moving the genre toward
a more driving sound by using a more forceful
“breakdown” beat, bounce beat seems, in
retrospect, like a natural progression.
Still, the music was initially dismissed by
all but a core of believers.
It took fans time to realize TCB’s innovation
wasn’t a rejection of “traditional”
go-go, but a shift.
Instead of paying homage to the genre’s
early greats by copying their style, bounce
beat built on a strong foundation and showed
that the music still had more ideas to explore,
limited only by percussive innovation and
imagination.
Fans of bounce beat, like the sound itself,
tend to be much younger than the traditional
go-go crowd.
The rototom-dependent subgenre was initially
maligned—some called it “noise,” others
argued that it wasn’t go-go at all.
Criticism of bounce beat was similar to what
was said about the trap rap bubbling in other
cities around the same time: It was blasted
for its sometimes suggestive lyrics, its thwacking
beat, its tempos that vacillated between syrupy
and frenetic.
But over time, bounce beat made inroads.
It was eventually embraced, or at least accepted,
by go-go fans both young and not so young.
In a city that considers “swing” go-go
the soundtrack of its story, this was no tiny
feat.
Even old-timers who deny the appeal of bounce
beat understand why it exists.
The brash style not only changed the way people
danced and partied but became the music for
a new chapter in D.C.’s story.
If the swing sound carried a generation of
Washingtonians through the rough ’70s and
’80s, a time when funk, jazz, and soul was
a much-needed salve, bounce grounded them
in the ’00s and ’10s, helped them keep
their bearings at a time of shifting city
demographics, when go-go’s epicenter realigned
as the sound of black Washington, at least
from the ’70s onward, was pushed to the
suburbs.
With its pummeling tone and tempo, bounce
beat remains a perfect musical metaphor for
what young people have experienced as they’ve
watched their city be slowly replaced by something
unrecognizable.
In the 11 years since its creation, bounce
bands have flooded the area: Reaction, TOB,
New Impressionz, ABM, XIB, Allstarz, UEB,
HQB, AAO, Gameova, Dreamteam, Drama Squad,
Main Attraction, Heavy Impact, AJA,A2C,MIB
and a lot more.
Violence
One well-publicized venue with trouble was
Club U, located inside a District-owned building
at the corner of 14th and U Street NW, where
numerous incidents—including murder—occurred,
leading to the revocation of its liquor license,
and eventual closing.
In March 2007, Prince George's County, Maryland,
County Executive Jack B. Johnson also cracked
down on venues playing go-go music, announcing
the indefinite closing of nine area clubs
that had experienced a high frequency of police
calls many for violent incidents in the preceding
year.
A court battle ensued over whether the closings
were justified, with a court order temporarily
stopping the closing of five of the clubs.
See also
Music of Washington, D.C.
Baltimore club, another subgenre native to
the region
Washington, D.C. hardcore, another native
music genre associated with Washington D.C.
Anwan Glover, musician, DJ
Kevin "Kato" Hammond, publisher
Anthony Harley, trumpet player
References
External links
Matt Miller, "Cultural Life in a 'Chocolate
City': A Review of Natalie Hopkinson's Go-Go
Live, Southern Spaces, 4 October 2012.
