In April 2019, a cultural clash broke out in Washington, DC, that triggered a groundswell around preserving its native Black culture: On a fast-gentrifying block in the Shaw neighborhood, tenants of a new luxury condo building complained about music blaring from speakers at a neighboring retailer. The subject of the complaint was Go-Go, a percussive soul music culture indigenous to DC’s Black community, and the uproar was swift: Thousands marched and danced in street rallies under the banner #DontMuteDC.
Go-Go music, developed by young Black DC artists in the 1970s, had for decades been the music of the streets and nightlife across the city, which was until recently majority-Black. The hashtag #DontMuteDC became the moniker for a group that stood not just for the right of that store owner to play Go-Go, but for a broader agenda to stop the pricing out and pushing out of Black people. Among that movement’s eventual goals: To open a museum.
Last month, the Go-Go Museum & Cafe opened in Washington, DC, with the mission of preserving the music’s history and culture. For the museum’s founders, the survival of Go-Go is tantamount to the survival of Black DC, particularly in the face of hyperdrive-gentrification and an increasingly hostile federal government.
“We have aimed to disrupt stubborn racial hierarchies that have determined who is invited into the halls of power and who is free to party in the streets of DC,” says American University professor Natalie Hopkinson, the Go-Go museum’s chief curator and author of the 2012 book Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City.
The museum’s opening coincides with President Donald Trump’s repeated comment that he wants to “take over” DC from its Black woman mayor to make it “beautiful.” During his 2024 campaign, Trump denigrated the city, a premiere haven for thriving Black middle-class families, as “rat-infested” and “graffiti-infested.” Last week, after Republicans in Congress threatened to pull millions in transportation funding, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced she would paint over the mural at Black Lives Matter plaza.
But a makeover of the city into something that its longtime Black residents wouldn’t recognize — and that many wouldn’t be able to afford to live in — began long before Trump. The Go-Go museum aims to honor a music style that once made DC a cultural destination, much like Hip Hop did for New York City and jazz did for New Orleans.