Chuck Brown - Bustin' Loose

Chuck Brown - Bustin' Loose (1979)

Yesterday, I was watching Tabi Bonney's "Pocket" video on YouTube when the last couple of frames caught my eye. In the video, a man wearing a jacket opens up his tee shirt displaying the message "KEEP D.C. BLACK". The shirt kind of sparked my interest as I have a been there a bunch of times and always sought to understand the culture beyond its clean, tourist-friendly facade. Most of my day today was spent reading about Go-Go, a mutation of funk native and isolated to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area that is to this day the predominant black musical form in the city. What I know now is that D.C. is an anomaly of a city that has a very distinct black culture (which is why they listen to Go-Go instead of hip-hop in the first place). The phenomena of white flight there is even more concentrated and polarized than in other cities, because employment (mostly government related) is still located in a central business district that is its own municipality (D.C. proper). When the businessmen and politicians leave for the suburbs in Maryland or Virginia, D.C. becomes a hub for black culture that is separated politically and socially from the mainstream. It is under these conditions that regional musical traditions like Go-Go flourish. I find the topic incredibly interesting and I'll post more as I discover it. I'll leave you with some tracks from Chuck Brown, the godfather of Go-Go.

Chuck Brown - We Need Some Money
Chuck Brown - Woody Woodpecker
Chuck Brown - Bustin' Loose