‘Don’t Mute D.C.’: A conversation with Natalie Hopkinson
Natalie Hopkinson, a lifelong DMV resident, has played various roles in defense of her hometown culture: from Washington Post journalist to author and professor; from activist to D.C. arts commissioner to chief curator of the recently opened Go-Go Museum & Cafe. In a recent conversation for CB’s “Jazz as Resistance” project, she talked about her landmark 2012 book, Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City, and the success of the “Don’t Mute DC” movement she helped launch.
In your book, you show how go-go is kind of the crowning popular cultural achievement of the “Chocolate City” era in D.C., in the 1970s and ’80s. When we hear Chuck Brown and the first generation of go-go, what does that music tell us about those kind of glorious years for Black culture here?
I talk about this in the book a little bit, but I’ve seen it more in practice: I just think about it as freedom music. You know, we’re talking about “Free DC” again — but this term is introduced when D.C. was being liberated and we were getting home rule, and there was all this excitement and optimism after the Civil Rights Movement. Like, look, we won these battles. They can’t legally discriminate. We have self-determination over the city and the administrative gears. I think the music coincides with that freedom, that new opening, that idea of self-determination. It’s also aligned with these global musics and movements for decolonization. All the Caribbean and African countries are newly free then also. It’s this Pan-African freedom movement. Go-go is rooted here, but the music has all these Afro-Latin beats and that global Black freedom sound.
[View the full ‘Jazz as Resistance’ zine]
The way go-go is performed and experienced, with no breaks and just an immersion in a circle of rhythm, is directly tied to that.
Very much. The call-and-response in it is deeply West African. The music is a conversation. Literally, the circle is something that’s recurring. Whether it’s the dancing that’s going on or it’s a circle of sound — you’re in a community. You’re creating the music together. In the West African tradition, there’s no stage. You’re on the ground with not the audience, but the participants. You’re connecting with each other through your heartbeats and your movements and the drum is driving all of that. And no, there’s no break. You’re just grooving. Which is something that Chuck Brown did because he was just really competing with disco. He was just trying to keep people engaged and locked in. And that’s the basic formula for go-go; that’s the play they’re still running.
Your book shows how the powers-that-be from the ’80s to the 2000s really scapegoated the music, casting it as a problem when actually go-gos were just a place where simmering frustrations sometimes came out. In recent years, it’s been interesting to see official D.C. changing its tune and even naming go-go the city’s official music — an effort you’ve been personally involved in.
Before the Don’t Mute DC movement started in April 2019, D.C. politicians were sort of defenders of go-go, but they were muted defenders. When the Metro PCS store was threatened that month, working with Ronald Moten, who was my partner in starting Don’t Mute DC, we were able to get the music put back on right away by mobilizing. But then there was still so much energy, and people were still so angry. I think it was just this cumulative feeling around the music: The expression against go-go was an expression of anti-Blackness that also showed up in so many other areas of public policy and public life.
After we were able to get the music back on, there were all these other people who had problems, and they were like: Can you help? And so that’s what we did. We started activating the go-go bands. My favorite go-go protest we did was at United Medical Center. The nurses’ union called us; they were like, “Can you help? These people are crazy. They’re defunding our hospital.” Meaning that the whole east of the river would have no freakin’ hospital! This was like, genocidal. The most babies in the city are born in Ward 8 — what are you talking about, we can’t have a hospital? So we ended up having two go-go bands that came out, and it was so beautiful. One of the things that Phil Mendelson and Vince Gray, who were really pushing this, were saying is, “Oh, you know, nobody really lives there. It’s half-empty. It’s fine. We’re gonna build a new one. It’ll be built in a couple years, but they’ll be all right.”
Yeah, I think Anthony Williams said the same shit when he closed down D.C. General in 2001.
Yeah, this is what they do. I remember going in the parking lot, and the nurses had organized the patients. There were like 100 people living in long-term care at United Medical Center. And one of them came out — I’ll never forget this — and he was in a wheelchair, and he had this little sign that said, “DON’T CUT OUR CARE.” He’s just like: “I live here.” You know? I exist. I remember doing an interview with him, and I said, “Sir, tell me your story. Are you a go-go fan?” And he’s like, “No, no, I’m kind of a jazz man myself.” But he appreciated the band coming out there. Looking at this man who they claim doesn’t exist, while at the time D.C. had hundreds of millions in surplus, I was just like: What kind of savagery is this city? So the bands came, they activated the parking lot, all these young people came out, twerking, holding up signs: “DON’T MUTE DC,” “DON’T CUT OUR CARE.” The initial vote was 11-1, and by the time Monday, when they went to vote again, that vote got flipped. Phil Mendelson and Vince stayed on their bullshit, but everybody else flipped. It was like, wow. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.
And from there, Moten and I just kept working. We did it again for the halfway house that they were trying to close. Same thing: We had I think 1,000 people that came on a Monday night in August to do a rally for halfway houses. Where else do they do that at? D.C. — Chocolate City.
And we’re organizing people to vote at all of these rallies. People are selling gear. People are selling little clothing lines. But the music is the thing that brings the magic. It brings the people. And because it’s sort of operating in this space of — is it a protest, is it a party? — they kind of have to let us do these things. Because they weren’t technically protests. But they were very effective. And so we were really, really effective in articulating what the issue is, articulating what it is that we need, and then having a specific ask. And mixing the music all together. And so we kept doing that over and over and over again, and we ended up getting all the way to opening up the Go-Go Museum & Cafe in February. It’s just been crazy.