Go-Go Appreciation Week takes place at a time when District residents are demanding an end to local-federal law enforcement cooperation that has exacerbated the harassment, detainment, and assault of Black and Latino people.
However, as Ivan Navas explained, what Black and Latino Washingtonians share goes well beyond state-sanctioned violence. He said that special connection can be found in go-go, the local musical genre he came to love and appreciate under the direction of Jose Lopez, an Afro-Puerto Rican musician and friend of Godfather of Go-Go Chuck Brown.
“We celebrate Africa through the music, through the drum.…It’s another ring, another channel to what is our heritage,” said Navas, an instrumentalist-educator who’s well versed in Afro and Pan-American music.
Navas, a native Washingtonian of Salvadorean descent, recently marked the beginning of Go-Go Appreciation Week alongside: Ron Moten, co-founder of the Don’t Mute DC movement; Chris “Go-Go Chris” Bridges of TOB; Eduardo Perdomo of the D.C. Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs (MOLA); the digital marketing guru known as Cohen “CosbyDigital” Cosby III; and Darrin X of Go-Go Royalty on the stage at the Go-Go Museum and Cafe.
During the kickoff, Moten, museum co-founder and longtime go-go advocate, joined Colombian advocacy organization Poder del Pueblo in screening the music video for “Go-Go Cumbia,” a tune that go-go songstress J’Ta and Experience Band recorded with Yeison (Jason) Landero, a Colombian accordionist and grandson of Andres Landero— known to many as a pioneer of cumbia, Colombia’s Afro-indigenous musical tradition.
Moments before the video started, Navas reflected on go-go music’s potential to unite Black and Latino people. In recent years, he’s advanced that cause while conducting presentations on go-go music’s Afro-Latino elements and performing at the annual D.C. Afro-Latino Festival alongside other members of the Salsa orchestra known as La Mafia del Guaguanco.
“Go-go must continue on, and know that your Latino brothers and sisters, we love it,” Navas said. “Why? Because it’s a part of our heritage as well. When we think of go-go, we think of coming back to a wonderful family dinner. We get to hear from our brothers and sisters, cousins, our shared experiences through the music, and the music is our nutrition.”
Go-Go Cumbia: A Soundtrack for Those Sharing a Common Experience
Even as District officials denied post-surge collaboration between the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and ICE, residents reported seeing both entities at police stops in parts of Northwest that ended in the detainment of someone suspected of being undocumented.
In Northeast, specifically along Benning Road, and in Southeast near the intersection of Pennsylvania and Minnesota Avenues in Southeast, Black residents are facing similar issues as they rail against Homeland Security investigators’ use of weapons. During the more recent situation, which took place on Nov. 13, a federal officer discharged their weapon while in what a Metropolitan Police Department incident report described as a vehicular pursuit that started on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast and ended on Sherriff Road in Northeast.
On Monday, D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) told The Informer that MPD leadership will testify before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary during a Dec. 4 hearing that, while not exclusively focused on local-federal law enforcement cooperation, will provide opportunity to discuss that issue.
“It is just fundamentally important for all of our residents and for our human rights and civil rights to make sure that we have [a] law enforcement apparatus locally and federally that honors the law period,” Pinto told The Informer. “And this will certainly be a topic that comes up, and I invite anybody in the public to come testify at that hearing.”
Perdomo, MOLA’s first self-identified Afro-Latino leader, didn’t speak directly to recent incidents involving federal immigration agents. He did however shed light on what he called a chance for Black and Latino residents to recognize their shared struggles.
“This is not something that the Black community in Washington, D.C. hasn’t experienced…like the racial profiling…of hardworking people trying to make a living and because of the way they look, it’s just raised suspicion, “ Perdomo said. “There’s a huge opportunity to work together, to understand that what happens to me today can happen to you tomorrow, that we’re all on the same boat. For many years, we’ve been born apart with the premise that we’re not the same, and it’s a fallacy.”
In the mid-1960s, Black and Latino people showed unity as Chuck Brown performed with Los Latinos, a band that played Top 40 music with a Latin flair. Shortly after, Brown launched Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. His stint with Los Latinos is credited, in part, with his development of the go-go genre that’s gone on to dominate the hearts, minds, and souls of countless Washingtonians.
Earlier this year, Poder del Pueblo and The Afro-Latino Institute hosted a panel discussion at The Go-Go Museum and Cafe where Landero and others explored similarities between go-go and cumbia. Months later, in September, Landero, J’Ta and The Experience Band returned for a two-day event that turned into the music video featured at Monday’s kickoff event.
“We had first The Experience Band play, then we had Jason’s band play a couple of songs, then we did the panel and then we had them jam,” said Guerrero. “Then out of that, the African drums from Colombia were mixing with the congas, and they were mixing with the timbales. The melodies of the trombone, accordion and the gaita were all just coming together.”
At the height of the pandemic, Guerrero launched Poder del Pueblo as a virtual platform for Latin American artists speaking about the spirit of resistance permeating through their music. He would later build upon those efforts by bringing Colombian band Son Palenque to the District, and later working with The Go-Go Museum and Cafe.
“That kind of became the model where we started bringing specific groups, especially the ones that were really about what it meant to be Black in Colombia, to be indigenous or to be displaced by the armed conflict or affected by it,” Guerrero told The Informer. “Basically highlighting those stories of really how music has helped unite people, how people have been able to keep their traditions through music, and then really bringing that story to immigrants in D.C.”
Guerrero, a native of Colombia and ardent grassroots organizer, reflected on the opportunities abound for he and others striving to drive home a larger point about Black-Latino unity.
“This song (“Go-Go Cumbia”) can help [expose us to] the wisdom in the Black community of what it means to have this promise of citizenship not realized,” Guerrero said. “Many of us in the immigrant community think that if we have citizenship, that’s the answer. But even with citizenship, we’re not gonna have those promises realized. So I think the goal is really to have that deep conversation about what does it mean… and how we can work together to actually build something even more powerful than the 14th Amendment.”
A Question of How to Keep Go-Go for Future Generations
This year, Go-Go Appreciation Week marks the countdown to the 2026 Go-Go Awards, which will commemorate 50 years of go-go music with a focus on its African roots.
On Nov. 17, the first night of Go-Go Week, the Go-Go Museum and Cafe, based on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in Anacostia, hosted a discussion with Bob Cicero of Globe Poster, a pioneer of the classic go-go poster. Other programming throughout the week includes the Make Go-Go 4EVA Youth GoGo Band Showcase, an African diaspora cooking demonstration with Chef Angie, and the launch of a campaign to encourage the embrace of vinyl at a time when fewer go-go songs are appearing on streaming platforms.
Bridges, founder and lead mic of TOB, said that youth must encourage one another to continue the tradition. “I know when we was kids and we started a go-go band, we inspired other kids,” Bridges said. “There were so many bands right after TOB.”
For Bridges, school provided that environment conducive to exploring with the bounce beat.
“I’m vouching for the music programs to be back in D.C. public schools,” he told reporters on Monday. “The Go-Go Museum, Ron Moten, myself and other people that help out with go-go in general, we’re going to do all we can to get the music back in front of the kids because that’s the first step. And then we’ll have all the kids back in go-go, just claiming their heritage.”
Moten, who, along with go-go scholar Dr. Natalie Hopkinson, opened The Go-Go Museum and Cafe to the public earlier this year, articulated a vision in which District youth see and recognize go-go culture and tradition in all facets of their existence, similar to what he recounted seeing as a youngster in the District, and more recently, while traveling abroad.
“When we grew up, go-go was in churches,” Moten said. “I didn’t understand the impact that had on our community until I went to Brazil and saw how every weekend they had what we would consider go-gos, with the food and the culture and the people coming together at the church.”
Moten later said he’s attempted to recreate that essence with live events at the Go-Go Museum and Cafe.
“When we’re doing these jam sessions with different artists, we bring young people…like they used to do with the African drummers in different charter schools that were African,” Moten said.
As Moten and other leaders of cultural venues figure out how to secure funding during economically precarious times, he continues to espouse the Go-Go Museum and Cafe’s role in expanding visitors’ musical palettes.
“When I see different people, different cultures, different races come into this museum, we can educate them and bring them together,” Moten said. “I don’t think there’s nothing better that could be happening right now.”