With Black History Month in full swing, legions of go-go aficionados celebrated the official opening of the Go-Go Museum & Cafe on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in Southeast.
The occasion — which took place five years to the day that go-go became D.C.’s official sound — proved particularly significant for Nabeeh Bilal, a visual artist and Ward 8 resident who helped designed the go-go bus, and elements of what’s now the world’s first-ever physical display of go-go music and culture.
Bilal, whose work includes the Marion Barry memorial mural that was unveiled at the Marion S. Barry Building in Judiciary Square, called the Go-Go Museum & Cafe a win not only for go-go, but the community surrounding the museum.
“I’ve seen this area before development and condominiums,” said Bilal, co-founder of CreativeJunkFood, a multimedia creative studio. “Change is happening around us and I’m happy to [be working] with people like [museum co-founders] Ron Moten and Dr. Natalie Hopkinson to contextualize this information, and honor and uphold the history.”
As the D.C. government continues to involve Bilal and other visual artists in the design of public areas, Bilal said he foresees the Go-Go Museum and Cafe serving as an crucial incubator of creativity. “The impact of this museum will be financial, pride and inspiration,” Bilal told The Informer. “It will become a space for people [where they can] show aspects of their art and fellowship with each other.”
The grand opening of the Go-Go Museum & Cafe, which came months after a similarly star-studded soft launch, spurred bumper-to-bumper traffic in Downtown Anacostia on the morning and early afternoon of Feb. 19.
For a couple hours, District officials, government personnel, go-go legends, and go-go enthusiasts reflected on go-go’s impact and perused the building where, over the course of several weeks, at least 50 groups of schoolchildren will learn about, among other things, the contributions of Godfather of Go-Go Chuck Brown, Backyard Band, and bounce beat bands TOB and XIB.
In her remarks, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) acknowledged D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (I-At large), who successfully shepherded the Go-Go Official Music of the District of Columbia Designation Act through the council in 2020. The legislation’s passage marked another turning point in a movement that started when hundreds of go-go lovers converged on the corner of 7th Street and Florida Avenue in Northwest and successfully reversed the silencing of a popular store that played go-go from loudspeakers.
Bowser later tried her hands at the conga drums alongside the Experience Band. Guests then awed at the displays of early go-go records, music magazines, promotional flyers, instruments, television displays showing past performances, and even a hologram.
As Black District residents — and all other historically marginalized groups for that matter — combat a slew of Trump executive orders that threaten District autonomy and other markers of progress, Bowser emphasized the museum’s role in preserving D.C. culture. “What I know about history is it can be lost, it can be forgotten, both intentionally erased or by neglect,” Bowser told celebrants. “We have to be intentional about how we preserve our music.”
In 2009, Moten, who had his start in violence interruption, gave the clarion call for a go-go museum during an annual go-go awards show. More than a decade later, he’s conducting private tours of the museum he envisioned.
During these tours, he spends time extolling the development along Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue and Marion Barry Avenue.
In his Feb. 19 remarks before celebrants, Moten credited Bowser with directing millions of dollars to a part of the city still in need of political and economic support. “What’s happening right here with the mayor and 13 other businesses in Anacostia, it’s something you wouldn’t see in any other part of the country,” Moten said, singing Bowser’s praises. “I’ve never seen a mayor invest in people like us.”
Marcus Williams, Anacostia High School’s senior class president, echoed Moten’s sentiments, saying that the museum and cafe have the potential to create jobs in the surrounding community. “I want to thank Ron Moten, whose heart is with the Anacostia community,” said Marcus, who’s expected to attend Morehouse College in the fall.
In his remarks, Marcus took audience members down memory lane. “If I say sardines, or welcome, or Backyard, many of y’all would tap your feet and know what comes next,” he said. “I want to highlight that the very first go-go song was released by Chuck Brown with ‘Bustin Loose’ and now we have declared go-go music as the official music of DC.”
Hopkinson, the chief curator of the museum, expressed optimism for the launch of a building that she said Black people need at such a precarious time.
“We’ve really gone through some difficult times and we really need to dance,” Hopkinson said. “We need to dance, we need to be together, we need to be a community, we need to feel the music, feel our heartbeats together and that is what go-go has been doing in this city for the last 50 years and that’s what we want it to do forever.”
