I came of age inside the Beltway in the mid-90s, so go-go was the pulse of my teenage years. People who aren't from there are generally shocked when I mention that all the radio played on Friday and Saturday nights was a form of music that they've never heard of. So I was excited to see a book that adds to the skimpy amount of critical literature on the heartbeat of DC.
Too bad the book and its author are both total jokes. First off, this book is far more a collection of newspaper articles than a cohesive narrative. And they're not very good articles either, in terms of writing ability (bland) and content (preposterous). For example, she inexplicably spends a chapter in this already rather meager volume on religious go-go, which is probably not as important as, say, a sketchbook history of the genre. So she profiles an ex-stripper and pimp who run some bama go-go after they've found Jesus for two weeks, yet she seems oblivious to the existence of seminal figures like the Northeast Groovers and Junkyard Band, who get a couple of mentions in passing. I honestly don't think she's aware of anything iconic or seminal in the music itself. It's like hearing a middle-aged high school principal try to explain hip-hop culture or something.
Which is probably the book's biggest flaw: Hopkinson doesn't really understand the music she proclaims to be protective of. She grew up in Indiana or someplace in cow country and had never heard of go-go until her freshman year at Howard (which even she admits is not a go-go hotspot for DC). Yet she chest-thumps protectively about go-go and DC as if she owns the place and is the gatekeeper of the music. In other words, she's a dilettante who understands neither the music nor the area. Someone who understands DC might have a less atavistic idea about cultural diversity. She discusses an unimportant controversy over Visionz Clothing, an Asian-owned outfitter selling garish t-shirts to go-go fans. Naturally, Visionz's black competitors stage a boycott, complete with race-baiting that Hopkinson reports on with a mindlessness that suggests she A) doesn't seem to notice that it amounts to simple racism and plays it objectively despite being firmly planted on her high horse about other topics; and B) doesn't seem to have noticed the gigantic Asian population that has lived in the DC area since 1980. Then again, Hopkinson doesn't seem to know that Virginia exists, since she has never lived there in the 45 minutes that she's lived in the Beltway. Why is she discussing a clothing controversy from 2004? Hmm. Good question. To fill pages? Because she has nothing else to say about a topic she doesn't know anything about?
The same obliviousness mars her "study" of black DC in general. She crows about the "Chocolate City" and how it has been run by black people, yet any of the city's foibles are, of course, "their" fault - meaning the white people who don't actually run the city. It's a very atavistic take on representative democracy that makes me wonder if she's writing from a time warp in 1989. She peacocks about writing an angry column for the Washington Post about white people gentrifying "her" neighborhood (by the way my white grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great grandparents were living there in the 19th century, so slow your roll). In her world, it's outrageous that people move in and improve things so that it's safe to leave one's house at night. There aren't murders and drugs deals on every corner any more! Whatever will come to define black culture for Hopkinson? What a cynical view of an entire culture, if cleaning up one of the most dangerous cities in the country is seen as a return to some kind of plantation system.
Again, if she had a passing understanding of DC, she might realize that the "Chocolate City" era was a relatively small period of time in a long history of an ever-changing city, really just the 60s through the 90s. Bemoaning the demise of the "murder city" days of DC is just as stupid as it would have been for my grandfather to bemoan the demise of the malarial Irish slums of the Swampoodle era in which he was born in Northeast. To me it would make more sense for my other grandfather to complain about the demise of the safe middle-class Northeast in which he was raised - I can imagine him driving past Cardozo High School and having a serious grievance about his alma mater turning into an open-air crack market.
The nadir of the book, and the apotheosis of Hopkinson's Olympian, bama-level cluelessness, is her lengthy transcription (yes, it's a transcription of an interview, not actual writing) of a day spent with a pathetic loser wannabe drug kingpin from hicktown Maryland. Ron, a second generation PG County resident (this makes him an OG according to a transplanted fool like Hopkinson), is in his 30s, has a daughter, yet still lives with his mother when he's not cruising around town playing a 16-year-old's "gangster" fantasy of selling drugs and wasting space on the government teet of prison. Yet for Hopkinson, Ron is totally "hilarious," probably because he's the only low-class black person who's ever been lame enough to hang out with her in her laughable attempts to slum it and appropriate DC culture before another academic does it first. Ron, what a hilarious guy. She meets him as he finishes a prison stint for a murder in which he was allegedly involved. Hopkinson notes with wide-eyed admiration, "If Ron knew anything about who pulled the trigger that night, he never told me, and he never told authorities." Gee, what a stand-up guy. Mind, this is in a book in which the author quite reasonably shakes her head over senseless murders of teenagers on every other page. Oh but wait, those murders should be solved by white authorities, not by the people actually responsible for them, so Ron's just playing out his cultural role. Again, what a cynical joke.
And don't get me started on Hopkinson's simple-minded economic theories. She praises the underground, tax-free drug economy and doesn't seem to understand that taxes pay for schools, social programs, and neighborhood improvement. Yet whose fault are the poor schools, social programs, and neighborhoods. I'll give you three guesses, and two don't count.
The book is also filled with half-hearted, wet-blanket attempts at academic nonsense. She analyzes dances from a stupid sociological perspective about African traditions, as if it's supposed to be interesting or surprising. She makes the all-to-common error of thinking that black music is somehow unique for expressing what's happening in its culture in ways that don't get reported in the media. And you won't believe the nugget she uncovers from Chuck D of Public Enemy: apparently rap music is the "CNN of black America"! What stunning, extensive, mind-blowing research! It's that level of triteness that characterizes this entire poor excuse of a book.
Go-go deserves both a competent critical study and a comprehensive narrative history. Hopkinson delivers neither. She should be banned from writing. And in the eyes of this tenth-generation Washingtonian, she should certainly be banned from writing about DC. To paraphrase Pleasure (a band Hopkinson likely has never heard of), don't put it in your pocket; don't lock it.
