It’s a bit past 7 p.m. on a Sunday night in mid-August, and a couple hundred protesters are spilling into Kalorama Park. An organizer hoists a bullhorn and leads the crowd in chanting as the thick vibrations of an electric bass and drums in the distance grow closer.
A go-go truck, hauling dozen-piece band TOB, is making its way down Columbia Road in Northwest to lead those gathered in a march toward the postmaster general’s home. Throngs of rallygoers run to meet it, forming an impromptu block party beside the park.
“There’s no movement without music,” Long Live GoGo founder Justin “Yaddiya” Johnson tells the crowd from atop the truck.
Music, an indispensable component of social-justice activism, has been a mainstay this summer as tens of thousands have filled D.C. streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the District, and across the country, the songs of the movement range from solemn to intense. And, as some of the individuals sharing and creating the music for direct action in D.C. can attest, its impact is significant.
The homegrown genre of go-go has energized crowds and affirmed Black vitality. DJ-spun soundtracks of Black artists have fostered a vibe of unity. And protest chants, doused in hip-hop, are serving as tools to continue the fight.
‘The Symbol Of Black Culture In D.C.’
Johnson has produced go-go concerts in the region since he was a teen.
The Silver Spring rapper, band manager, event producer (and potential 2022 mayoral candidate) founded Long Live GoGo in 2017. The project is the force behind a series of go-go-infused events, including rallies branded as Moechella (a hybrid of D.C. slang “moe” and the California music fest).
Last year, thousands of community members gathered at 14th and U streets at a Moechella rally to support the genre and stand up against gentrification that continues to encroach on longtime majority-black neighborhoods such as Shaw. A month prior, a Shaw cellphone store that had blasted go-go for decades was told by ownership to cut the music after a neighbor threatened to sue over the sound. T-Mobile, the store owner, ultimately allowed the music to return.
Johnson, 33, has harnessed the power of go-go at scores of rallies over the past few years; the first, he says, was a 2018 protest against the Amplified Noise Amendment, a D.C. Council bill that many local musicians feared would have devastating effects on busking and on city culture. That summer, Johnson also emceed the Kremlin Annex protests outside the White House for roughly 180 nights.
Go-go is a natural fit for activism, due in part to its roots. It’s largely based around percussion, which has been used in many musical traditions — particularly across the African diaspora — to galvanize people, Johnson says.
“On top of that, I think go-go is not only the music of our culture, but it’s the symbol of Black culture in D.C.,” Johnson says. “So it’s very important to have that demographic and community present, active and engaged.”
This February, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed legislation making go-go the official music of the District. Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie introduced the bill last summer and says the community activism spurred by the muzzling of go-go at the cellphone store was a motivating factor.
This summer is not the first time go-go groups have performed on wheels to spread their music throughout the city; in the 1980s, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation hosted showmobiles to provide free outdoor go-go concerts for residents. But Long Live GoGo’s use of the trucks, Johnson says, has helped amplify the music’s presence this summer.
Howard University communications professor Natalie Hopkinson, who advocated the adoption of go-go as D.C.’s official music and wrote a book on the genre, told Salon that go-go has a deep past of “taking back the power.”
“Just the fact that it exists is resistance, just the fact that you have this art form that is Black-owned, local, that holds an economy around it is also resistance,” Hopkinson said in the piece. In the 1980s, the District imposed curfews on attendees of go-go clubs and the music served as a kind of scapegoat for the city’s social problems.
But not all go-go experts agree on whether the genre is inherently “resistance” music. Nico “the GoGo-Ologist” Hobson says he doesn’t see it that way.
“Every genre has its own path. And go-go’s path, it came through the streets and the churches,” he tells DCist. “It’s faith-based, originally, and then party-based … If you look at call and response, that is derived from church.”
Yet Hobson says the art form has had its “moments” of resistance, and references socially-conscious songs “The Word” by the Junkyard Band and “D.C. Don’t Stand for Dodge City” by supergroup the GoGo Posse as examples.
For Johnson, the music’s “interactive” nature and “adrenaline-pumping” energy make it ideal for activism, he says.
“We present people with some of what they want and a lot of what they need when they come to these rallies,” he says. “Some of what they want being the music, but a lot of what they need being the messages that we convey while we’re there.”
The All-Night DJ
Before I meet DJ Do Dirt, I hear his work.
On a recent, rainy weekend afternoon at Black Lives Matter Plaza, I locate a social-justice event using the records Do Dirt is spinning to light the way. Across from the White House, community members are brandishing paintbrushes and spray paint to “reclaim” the H Street Art Tunnel with messages such as “Black is my happy color” on posterboard. At one end of the tunnel, the DJ, who asked that DCist not use his name, is pumping “Family Affair” by Mary J. Blige.
“I’m very good at really having a good vibe with the people around me. I love to feel energy,” Do Dirt says, adding that he often likes to have a bowl of burning sage beside him while playing music. He forgoes playlists, opting instead to feel the room, albeit an outdoor one.
“People might be arguing right now, and I’ll play ‘We Are Family’ and then they’ll all just start laughing and start hugging each other,” he says. “You’ve got to feel the vibe, you’ve got to be able to be one with the community.”
Do Dirt began attending this summer’s social-justice events not as a musician, but as a medic. The father and recreation specialist with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation is CPR-certified and says he was sprayed with mace when attempting to help a 6-year-old girl at a demonstration this summer.
“My point of view changed from now being a medic and helping to, I kind of want to be out here because what if that 6-year-old girl was my 4-year-old son?” he says. “So I tried to do whatever I could with my platform. And I’m a DJ, and people love music, and we can speak to each other even if you want to vote for Trump, if you want to vote for this person, if you believe in this — music can bring us all together at the end of the day.”
Do Dirt, a DJ for the past four years, left his hometown of Flint, Michigan, several years ago to attend Howard University on a swim scholarship.
“Once I came here, I fell in love with the culture because everyone is different. Everyone is from somewhere else,” Do Dirt says. “Even though you have the people that are from here, D.C. is like a melting pot of people.”
Earlier this summer, Do Dirt played music from a U-Haul and lent a mic to community members at sites of perceived “social injustice and injustice in the workplace,” he says. At times, nearby residents would step off of their porches and join him in a march, telling him they were drawn in by the music.
“I had a lightbulb in my head like, ‘Wow, music is a really powerful thing.’ I got these people that were sitting on their porch enjoying their Friday … and they just decided they wanted to come walk with us,” he says. “So at that point, I had to go ahead and kind of go all in.”
Do Dirt estimates he has DJ’d at roughly 50 social-justice events this summer. Part of his motivation is personal: He wants to help engender a safe “system” for his son. Do Dirt, who is experiencing homelessness, says he’s been arrested nearly two dozen times and spent, cumulatively, more than two months in D.C. detention centers in instances where he was ultimately released with no charges.
“[It was] based off of things like, ‘You fit the description,’ ‘We have probable cause,’ ‘Oh, you have a Michigan license plate?’” he says. “I don’t want my son to have to ever go through that. I don’t want anybody’s children, the next generation, to have to go through that.”
DJs have headed out to direct actions in the city and other parts of the country to help keep “the momentum going.” But for Do Dirt, there’s an additional benefit: Music at potentially combustible demonstrations can infuse the air with a sense of security for all who are present, law enforcement included. When he presses “play,” Do Dirt says nearby police officers seem to relax and even enjoy themselves.
“I just had three officers come up to me now and give me a fist pound, and be like, ‘We’re over there, we’re dancing, and just keep up the good work,’” he says. “When there’s no music, it’s a whole different vibe. They’re on, ‘Why y’all here? What are you doing here? Y’all need to leave.’”
Do Dirt has stayed through the night at events on several occasions, keeping the tracks going — from Bill Withers to Queen Latifah to Lizzo — in an effort to help foster a continued, if temporary, sense of peace. “I’ve noticed as soon as I’ve turned the music off, a lot of bad things have happened,” he says.
But despite the harm he and others have incurred at the hands of law enforcement, Do Dirt says he still has “respect” for their work.
“I just want them to all realize that they’re not a good cop or they’re not a bad cop. They’re a cop. They’re supposed to do their job,” he says. “And if their job at the end of the day is to protect and serve, then they need to protect and serve. And if that means that I have to stay out here every day, all day, all night, I just need gasoline for my generator, and I’ll be out here.”
A ‘Liberation Music Maker’
OnRaé LaTeal is an educator. And from the way the Arlington musician and videographer speaks about her role managing teen programs at the Hirshhorn Museum when we meet at Black Lives Matter Plaza, it sounds like the profession chose her, rather than the other way around.
“The reason that I am on this earth is to serve young people,” LaTeal says.
A few years ago, LaTeal (who prefers to use her middle name in place of her surname in creative roles) co-founded an initiative to raise up “the joyful experiences of Black girlhood” called the Black Girls Handgames Project. The program blends clapping games, such as Miss Mary Mack, with the sounds of hip-hop and soul.
“Really, that’s my niche,” she says. “I take experiences — Black people’s experiences, sounds for the movement, these really intimate moments from people of color, but more specifically Black people — and I transform them into contemporary sounds.”
Joy is a running theme in LaTeal’s work, surfacing again in the 2018 compilation album she co-produced, the Black Joy Experience. In 2016, the death of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot and killed by a Baton Rouge police officer, had a direct impact on her music.
“It sparked something in me to shift my music from just making music about my general experiences, experiences about love, to do music that is centering the movement, the movement for Black lives,” says LaTeal, who has performed at social-justice events for the past three years. “And uplifting and amplifying the experiences and the stories of Black people.”
The Suitland High School and Howard University alum, 33, worked with activist group Black Youth Project 100 on the Black Joy Experience (a second volume of which is underway), a collection of freedom songs and chants with a modern bent.
“The project is centering Black joy, something that I feel is super important to the movement because it helps us to sustain ourselves,” LaTeal says. “Black joy is the thing that has helped Black people to sustain themselves through just hundreds of years of trauma and oppression.”
While LaTeal has heard the album — which includes acoustic ballads such as “I Love Being Black” and hip-hop tracks — used at protests this summer, she says it doesn’t quite match the feeling of today’s unrest.
“Once George Floyd unfortunately was murdered and Breonna Taylor was murdered as well, I wasn’t really in the Black joy mood,” she says.
LaTeal recalls riding on a truck with the D.C. chapter of Black Lives Matter and hearing the album.
“The song ‘I Love Being Black’ is beautiful, but it just was not characterizing that moment,” she says. “I said, ‘Wait a second, I’ve got to start making some fight music, because that’s the mindset we are in right now.’ We are literally fighting for our lives. We are going to get free or we are going to die.”
In response, LaTeal remixed an existing chant, “Middle Finger to the Law,” and filmed an accompanying music video at Black Lives Matter Plaza. She’d like this and other chants on volume two of the project to serve as a sort of toolkit for freedom fighters, including policymakers and writers, she says.
“It’s going to get you revved up and galvanized to go out and fight and to put that battle armor on to make sure that you’re pushing this movement forward,” says LaTeal, who calls herself a “liberation music maker.”
Chanting is known for its ability to unite crowds, seamlessly converting listeners into participants.
“This music is important for expressing political messages, because it creates a sense of emotional connection and social coherence, even among strangers,” Mariusz Kozak, a Columbia University music professor, recently wrote in the Washington Post. “It does this through the physical link that develops between participants. In a way, music functions as a social glue that binds the minds and bodies of those who create it.”
The song format also allows LaTeal to hand freedom fighters the “language they need” before heading out to a direct action event. “When I teach the chants before a protest, they literally walk away and they’re reciting all of the chants that I’ve taught. I mean, it’s magical,” she says.
When she steps onto the stage, LaTeal doesn’t think of her work as a performance. Instead, she says she’s there to facilitate an experience. And though she has performed liberation music for a few years, her motivation has intensified.
“We are literally on the cusp of resting in our complete freedom,” she says. “And so when I perform now, it’s different. I’m not just going up there to perform; I’m going up there to literally get my people, my allies, ready to fight back in whatever capacity they can.”
LaTeal has pondered whether she’ll continue crafting liberation songs five years down the road. There’s no end date yet.
“I will be making this music and doing this type of work until things change, until the world shifts,” she says. “Until police officers aren’t murdering Black people in their sleep and in their backyards or in their cars in the middle of the day. Until Black young people are able to go to schools and have functioning computers and functioning printers and just the ability to be successful in a way that their white counterparts are.
“When that change happens, I guess I’ll stop then,” LaTeal says. “Maybe.”
This story originally appeared on DCist.