The Go-Go Museum and Café has been a long time coming. Anti-violence activist Ronald Moten, who’s behind the forthcoming museum in Anacostia, has spoken publicly about his idea for a place that would celebrate the history and culture of go-go music for at least five years. But ask him about it directly, and Moten will say that the work to create this museum began decades ago.

“None of this stuff just happened,” Moten tells DCist/WAMU. “This was a vision and a fight with others to make it happen.”

Moten is referring to the legal battles between go-go supporters and lawmakers in the 1990s and 2000s, when the D.C. Council issued liquor board violations, passed curfew laws, and escalated law enforcement around go-go venues. Moten says he and other advocates have spent countless hours protesting, organizing concerts, and drumming up public support for the preservation of go-go music and culture. 

Their fight seems to have paid off: In 2020, the D.C. Council recognized go-go as the official music of the District. And this month, four years after a complicated land dispute over Moten’s building on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, he finally broke ground on the Go-Go Museum, with Mayor Muriel Bowser, a number of D.C. councilmembers, and even filmmaker Spike Lee by his side. 

Moten says he’s always seen music as a means to education. The forthcoming 6,000-square-foot museum and café will be a site where visitors — particularly, young people — can learn about the genre’s roots in the drum traditions in African and Latin music and engage with the work of legendary D.C. performers like Chuck Brown and  Backyard Band. Musicians will have access to the building’s recording studio and performance stages, while community members will be able to take culinary lessons in its test kitchen or find a moment of peace in the community garden. Admission will be free for the museum, with the support of fundraisers, individual donations, and grants. 

If that sounds like a lot of promises, that’s because Moten isn’t one to downplay his ambitions and opinions — in fact, he often broadcasts them live to his 19,000 followers on Instagram. But he also says he’s gotten all the necessary permits approved (“the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life”) and that he’s not phased by the naysayers: “Most of the time when I do something, people tell me I can’t do it.”

Moten is planning for an April 2024 grand opening of the museum — exactly five years after he and go-go scholar Natalie Hopkinson kickstarted the #DontMuteDC movement that fought to keep go-go music playing outside in Shaw. But even before the museum opens, a traveling exhibit and stage fashioned out of a bus will bring the concept of the go-go museum to schools and D.C.-area events.

Hopkinson, who is the museum’s chief curator and author of Go-Go Live:The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City, says that the museum represents the “institutionalization” of the research and activism she and Moten have conducted for years. They’re capitalizing on relationships they have with living musicians and other go-go historians, as well as institutions like the Kennedy Center (she and Moten were part of the center’s Culture Caucus) and the D.C. Public Library, to curate the exhibits.

“We’re just swimming in materials that we’ve already collected,” Hopkinson says. “But we’ve really just scratched the surface.”

For Moten, the museum isn’t a cause for celebration on its own. The real work educating people and continuing the go-go legacy starts now. “This is not a moment, this is a movement,” he adds. “A lot of people get caught up on moments. They don’t last. Movements last.”

For this edition of Voices of Wards 7 & 8, we spoke to residents about what go-go means to them, as the city prepares for the opening of its first official museum dedicated to the lifestyle and culture associated with the music genre. 

Their responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Ron Moten

Our city deserves this [museum]. And this is a prime example of, when everybody comes together and does the right things for the right reasons, our city wins. I’m just happy to say that we were part of something that pulled everybody together and made it happen. And we need to see more of this. I see this being a vehicle around the clock for our city and our children. We’re gonna use it as a creative tool to preserve our music and culture and deal with violence. It’s all about being creative, man. That’s all it is.

Natalie Hopkinson 

We’ve been archiving dozens and dozens of oral histories with members of the go-go community: musicians, fans, collectors, educators … just everybody who you could think of. We’ve been recording their stories with our various partners. Trying to stitch together all these partners, it’s really difficult without having a real home institution that is 100% committed to the history and the culture. So that’s why I’m really happy for a brick-and-mortar space, as well as an expanding virtual space, to be able to keep the work going. We’ve just scratched the surface.

Bernisha Hodges – Ward 8 Resident 

Definitely over here in Ward 8,  I’m [known as] B.J.’s sister, and I’ve got my nonprofit going on. My brother was murdered August 5th 2023.

Go-go always brings family together. That African beat we love, we like to dance and, you know, be able to vibe with one another under the African beat.

The museum is bringing in peace to the neighborhood, giving everybody something to do under one umbrella. I really like the idea. I love the idea.

Lakesia Tibbs – Ward 8 Resident 

[The opening of  The Go-Go Museum] means a lot to me, Chocolate City! I’ve been here for years. I used to go see Essence and Backyard at the go-go. I love it. We need to keep it going on, our city – keep the peace, you know what I’m saying? We [need to] love each other, get our lives back together.

It will mean a lot to the youth, make them stronger. We need love, we need our love back! Yes, stop all the crimes, in the name of Jesus. Love you.

Bill Lee – Ward 8 Resident 

It’s a lovely thing. It’s a way to always make sure that the culture stays where it’s supposed to be. A museum is a historical place that people can actually come to and connect to what’s going on in Ward 8. So to me it’s Southeast, Southside – for the Go-Go Museum – nowhere better it should have been than right here.

I mean, listen, this is us. This is who we are. This is our culture. This is what we grew up on. And it’s about time that we literally have a place that we can say represents our culture, our music, who we are. No matter how gentrified these spaces may get, this is always going to be here. They’re going to know what go-go is and they’re going to know that we’re here to stay.

Clarence Johnson 

It means history. It shows that we as a people, we’ve come a long way. It means a whole lot – it’s in our community. We’re able to build wealth around here. I’m a D.C. native 100%. We can keep this in our community amongst ourselves, amongst our family and kids.

To me, art speaks for itself. Art tells a story of its own. We’re all artists in one way or another. You can be a photographer – you’re telling a story through your art; in a museum it’ll have our history about go-go, about how we were raised and came up on go-go music. We’re trying to spread it across the nation, from country to country, from city to city, state to state, continent to continent. We want it to be worldwide.

Dantes Augustin 

Go-Go means a lot to me because the revolution started with the beat of the drum, and it was illegal to have the drum in your possession – when they beat the drum all the warriors heard the call, and they attacked the colonizers. But to make it known, the drum is mystical, it’s voodoo, it has ancestral guidance. You could speak to your ancestors through the drums if you only knew how to connect with them. The higher spirits, the divine ones, the departed ones, they communicate with drums. When you want to celebrate them, honor them, you beat the drum. In Africa, this is where our forefathers came – with the drum, and they knew how to beat it and [how] to communicate with the highest spirit.  So, this is where it all started!

Go-go is D.C.’s favorite, number one music. When you listen to the beat, your body must move. You can’t sit down because it has that effect – is electrical, it’s energy, it’s synergy and its power.  It’s magnetic, it gravitates people. It’s an ambiance, it’s a celebration, it’s Chocolate city!

 As you know, they had an ordinance [for] noise in D.C. for playing go-go on Georgia by the Howard Hospital. And this is nonsense! To have a museum just like the Smithsonian – it’s a great privilege. To be in your own community, with your own art, with your own talent, with your own artists that bring youth awareness and teach the youth the value of music, the value you have in your art..We have our own museum; we could do the biggest show for the youth and stop the gun violence because go-go’s going to provide opportunities for them so they won’t be on the street. We give them music, we give them art, fine arts, and we’ll give them radio because We Act Radio is next door to it. It’s collaboration! You have designers that’s going to display in our museum just like the colonizer’s museum. But ours is going to have flavor.