The official sound of the nation’s capital turned 50 this year, and on Saturday, May 30, it pulsed through Fairmount Park as the Roots Picnic devoted a marquee set to a half-century of go-go music.
Presented by Baller Alert and Front Porch, and hosted by Kenny Burns and Noochie, the tribute brought together pillars of the genre, including E.U., Rare Essence, Ms. Kim, UCB, Northeast Groove, and many more. The celebration anchored the festival’s first day at Belmont Plateau, the new home of the two-day event curated by The Roots and Live Nation Urban.
A sound born in the District
Go-go traces its origins to the mid-1970s, when guitarist and bandleader Chuck Brown began directing his band, the Soul Searchers, to keep the percussion rolling between songs at the Maverick Room in the Edgewood neighborhood of Northeast Washington. The unbroken groove, layered with congas, cowbells and Afro-Latin rhythms and bound by call-and-response, became the heartbeat of the city.
Brown, widely known as the Godfather of Go-Go, scored a No. 1 Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop hit in 1979 with “Bustin’ Loose.” He died in 2012 at age 75, but the form he shaped never left the District. The year 1976 also marks the formation of Rare Essence in Southeast Washington, making the band’s appearance Saturday a living link to the genre’s foundation…