Go-Go Live : The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City Paperback / softback
by Natalie Hopkinson
Paperback / softback
Description
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 businesses that sold tickets to shows and recordings 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.
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.
Information
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Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:232 pages, 34 illustrations
- Publisher:Duke University Press
- Publication Date:22/05/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780822352112
Other Formats
- Hardback from £87.85
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:232 pages, 34 illustrations
- Publisher:Duke University Press
- Publication Date:22/05/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780822352112