Summer book season is upon us, and the D.C. Public Library is hoping to get some books about D.C.’s homegrown music genre in your beach bag. The DCPL is launching a three-part Go-Go Book Club in collaboration with Washington Performing Arts and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

The book club will convene three times this summer at Solid State Books on H Street. The three books to be discussed approach the genre from different perspectives, but all the authors in the series are exploring “the social history, and cultural history of go-go,” says Derek Gray, an archivist in the DCPL’s special collections department.

• First up on June 18 is a discussion of The Beat! Go-Go Music From Washington, D.C. The book, written by George Washington University music instructor Kip Lornell and former D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities chair Charles C. Stephenson Jr., traces the history of go-go music in conversation with music from black artists around the country.
• In July, the club will discuss Take Me Out To The Go Go: the Autobiography of Kato Hammond. Hammond, formerly of the band Proper Utensils, has since become the city’s preeminent go-go expert, having created a magazine, website, and documentary around the brand Take Me Out to the Go-Go. While he’s lately been covering the modern go-go scene, his autobiography explores his own experiences as a musician in the genre’s early days.
• The club’s final event will focus on Natalie Hopkinson’s book Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. Her book follows the history of go-go, and places it in the context of gentrification in the city. (Hopkinson will also be part of a free discussion at the Shaw library next month about go-go and gentrification.)

In April, a Metro PCS store in Shaw, which had become a local legend for blasting go-go music from speakers outside, was forced to turn off its music. Local outcry snowballed into the #DontMuteDC movement, and after demonstrations outside the store and support from Mayor Muriel Bowser, the music was turned back on.

But that has hardly been the end of #DontMuteDC. Over the past few months, thousands of people have flocked to a series of protests on U Street, and it has become a rallying cry around a variety of other issues related to gentrification. “What you see now is a new age of rebellion,” Kymone Freeman, co-founder of We Act Radio, told DCist recently.

And just this month, Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie introduced the Go-Go Official Music of the District of Columbia Designation Act of 2019, which, if passed, would make go-go the District’s official music. The legislation would also call for a program to promote the genre and archive pieces of its history.

Gray is hoping that the book club is a chance for people to learn more about the music that’s been in the headlines.

“[The book club is] for people who are new to the city, or even maybe some people who might not be fans. Maybe their attitudes could be changed. That’s one of the many goals that a book has, you know, to inform and to change minds.” Gray says. “And I’ve talked with some folks over the years who were fans, but were eager to learn more about the music and the genre.”

The Library has been on the go-go beat for years: In 2012, shortly after the death of Chuck Brown, the godfather of go-go, DCPL established the Go-Go Archive, a collection of objects and works related to the genre. (It’s not clear how the library’s archive would overlap with one potentially created by McDuffie’s legislation.)

Gray, who was on the team that established the archive, estimates the library now has 15 linear feet of go-go materials, meaning that if you laid all the boxes of go-go items end-to-end, it’d stretch 15 feet long. (For context, that’s a modest amount: Gray says some collections can be measured at 60 cubic feet.)

The collection includes “a little of this, a little of that,” as Gray puts it. That includes an “I love go-go” Virginia license plate, a pair of drumsticks used by D.C.’s The Backyard Band, photographs, news articles, magazines, and, of course, plenty of CDs and LPs. But there’s also a wealth of archival material, including a large donation of research from Hopkinson, amassed while she was writing her go-go book.

“It’s great to listen to the music and listen to ephemera, but if someone can come in and listen to Dr. Hopkinson’s interview with a go-go artist, that’s also rewarding,” Gray says.

The go-go archive might even be a resource for the author of a future go-go book club pick.

“That’s also the wonderful benefit of being in a public library: Anybody can come in,” Gray says. “You don’t have to be a student, you don’t have to be professor. It’s available for all folks.”

The Go-Go Book Club meetings take place June 18, July 18, and August 15. No registration needed. FREE