Proving that the District of Columbia’s cultural history doesn’t begin and end with white marble monuments, the D.C. Public Library has announced it is making an addition to its collection spotlighting the city’s distinctive sound: go-go music.
A new set of digital images called DC Decades is being added to the library’s Go-Go Archive. The project is the brainchild of Mustafa Tariq.
He told WTOP that DC Decades began as he shared some of his favorite images of D.C. as the birthplace of go-go music on social media.
It started out, he said, “as something fun to do, posting some pictures, some old-school stuff from you know, our teenage years,” when you couldn’t go far without spotting posters splashed on the sides of buildings, streetlights, or any vacant space, advertising upcoming concerts by bands including EU, Rare Essence and the Junkyard Band.
The project took on more gravitas as Tariq talked to a New Yorker who told him he should consider it a way of documenting the District’s cultural history. “It turned into a serious responsibility,” in recent years, Tariq said, “because of the climate of what’s going on in Washington, D.C. currently, as far as us trying to actually curate and preserve our true, organic and unique culture.”
Tariq said he’s proud to see DC Decades added to the collections at the D.C. Public Library. “Even on my platform, I’ve always tried to encourage the youth to get back into the library and just, you know, feel it, and check out a book every once in a while.”
The library’s latest initiative will formally recognize several bands and cultural figures each year, assisting them in building and maintaining their own collections.
Go-go music has been around for 50 years, and the D.C. Public Library established the Go-Go Archive in 2012 in memory of Chuck Brown, known as the “Godfather of Go-Go.”
Asked whether other cities have tried to claim the genre as their own, Tariq laughed. “That would be real bold for another city to actually try to claim go-go. We have what they call now ‘the receipts’,” he said, still laughing.
And now those receipts have a new home at the D.C. Public Library.
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