Maiesha Rashad, a pivotal figure in D.C.’s music scene, died Monday. Rashad had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in February.
She led the band Maiesha and the Hip Huggers. The band’s blend of styles, paired with Rashad’s vocals, led to a resurgence of popularity of go-go in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“She was an amazing vocalist,” says Natalie Hopkinson, an assistant professor at Howard University and the author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City.
Her role at the center of the band was unique at the time, and “she was very influential because she made the place of women essential,” according to Hopkinson. Rashad is credited with developing the so-called “grown and sexy” sound that made the female vocalist a key part of the genre.
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Rashad studied classical singing in her native Indiana, and she started performing jazz, pop and other genres when she moved to D.C., according to a Washington Post profile from 2001. Her turn to go-go happened when she began collaborating with Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliot from the group Experience Unlimited, whose song “Da Butt” was one of the genre’s biggest hits.
“When people heard we’d added a couple of fellas from E.U. a whole new crowd started coming out,” Rashad told the Post at the time.
The group played as many as 10 shows a week in the Washington region at the height of their popularity.
“When Maiesha did her thing, I stayed in the back and just let her do her vocals. And when I got my turn, of course, I brought the party on,” Sugar Bear told WUSA9 in May.
Charles C. Stephenson, an advocate for go-go music, co-author of the book The Beat: Go-Go Music From Washington, D.C., and a friend of Rashad’s says the band’s mix of styles helped other go-go bands find gigs, at a time when that was difficult to do.
“At various points in history, the music has been blamed for drug abuse or violence and when the city wanted to clamp down, go-go would feel the brunt,” Stephenson says of the genre, which is now the official music of D.C. Rashad helped reverse that trend because she presented the group as a cover band that sang ‘70s R&B and soul tunes. That allowed her to get into clubs, but as the night went on, they would switch to go-go.
“Once the band became popular, it just opened the doors for other go-go bands to get into venues and play music,” Stephenson says.
In addition to the Hip Huggers, Rashad led the soul and jazz group Chak Rah. In the 2001 Post profile, Rashad mentioned that she faced some questions about how she could make any money performing with the nine-piece group.
“Sometimes it’s about art over money. I just love that certain sound,” she told the paper. Later, she added that she’d been working on learning to play guitar.
“I hate the stereotype attached to the ‘chick singer,'” she says with scorn. “A lot of us ‘chicks’ are trying to change that, because we’re tired of the band members saying, ‘You don’t have to play anything, you just sing and shake your [backside].’ Come on, we can do more than that!”
According to WUSA 9, Rashad was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and was being treated at Suburban Hospital. She was living with her family until ten days ago, when she moved to hospice care.
