Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. It uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, and dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths.
Go-go is a subgenre of funk music with an emphasis on specific rhythmic patterns, and live audience call and response.
Jazz rap is a fusion of jazz and hip hop music, as well as an alternative hip hop subgenre, that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter." The rhythm was rooted in hip hop over which were placed repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, etc. Groups involved in the formation of jazz rap included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Gang Starr, The Roots, Jungle Brothers, and Dream Warriors.
Washington, D.C., has been home to many prominent musicians and is particularly known for the musical genres of Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, bluegrass, punk rock and its locally-developed descendants hardcore and emo, and a local funk genre called go-go. The first major musical figure from District of Columbia was John Philip Sousa, a military brass band composer. Later figures include jazz musicians, such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Rouse, Buck Hill, Ron Holloway, Davey Yarborough, Michael A. Thomas, Butch Warren, and DeAndrey Howard; soul musicians, including Billy Stewart, The Unifics, The Moments, Ray, Goodman & Brown, Van McCoy, The Presidents, The Choice Four, Vernon Burch, guitarist Charles Pitts, and Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul.
Electro is a genre of electronic music and early hip hop directly influenced by the use of the Roland TR-808 drum machines and funk. Records in the genre typically feature heavy electronic sounds, usually without vocals; if vocals are present, they are delivered in a deadpan manner, often through electronic distortion such as vocoding and talkboxing. It palpably deviates from its predecessor boogie by being less vocal-oriented and more focused on electronic beats produced by drum machines.
The 9:30 Club, originally named Nightclub 9:30 and also known simply as the 9:30, is a nightclub and concert venue in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Rolling Stone named the 9:30 Club one of the 10 best live music venues in the United States. In 2019, the club was named "Venue of the Decade" by VenuesNow.
Funky house is a subgenre of house music that uses disco and funk samples, a funk-inspired bass line or a strong soul influence, combined with drum breaks that draw inspiration from 1970s and 1980s funk records. The use of disco strings are also common in the genre, although not always. Funky house uses specific techniques and a specific sound, characterized by bassline, swooshes, swirls and other synthesized sounds which give the music a bouncy tempo with around 128 BPM.
Washington, D.C., hardcore, commonly referred to as D.C. hardcore, sometimes styled in writing as harDCore, is the hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. Emerging in late 1979, it is considered one of the first and most influential punk scenes in the United States.
Cool "Disco" Dan was the pseudonym of American graffiti artist Dan Hogg. His standard mark, a particularly styled rendering of his name, was ubiquitous in the Washington metropolitan area, notably along the route of the Washington Metro Red Line.
Marc André Edmonds, also known by the graffiti name ALI and as J. Walter Negro, “The Playin’ Brown Rapper” was an American artist and musician. As ALI, he is best known as the founder of 'Soul Artists' and originator of the cult of Zoo York. As "alter-ego" J. Walter Negro, he is remembered as the lead singer/songwriter of the proto-hip-hop-rap group 'J. Walter Negro and the Loose Jointz', who had some success with their 1981 release "Shoot the Pump".
Borf was a graffiti campaign seen in and around Washington, D.C., during 2004 and 2005, carried out by John Tsombikos while studying at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. This four-letter word was ubiquitous around the Northwest quadrant of Washington, and ranged from simple tagging to complete sentences to two-color stencils to the massive defacement on an overhead exit sign from the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to Constitution Avenue. Tsombikos was arrested on July 13, 2005, after tips led police to his latest tag.
Janette Beckman is a British documentary photographer who has worked in London, New York and Los Angeles. Beckman describes herself as a documentary photographer. While she produces a lot of work on location, she is also a studio portrait photographer. Her work has appeared on records for the major labels, and in magazines including Esquire,Rolling Stone,Glamour,Italian Vogue,The Times,Newsweek,Jalouse,Mojo and others.
Tim Conlon is an American artist and graffiti writer known for large-scale murals and works on canvas. He was featured as one of several artists in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery exhibit, Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, which included four large graffiti murals painted by Conlon and collaborator, David Hupp in 2008. This marked the first modern graffiti ever to be in the Smithsonian Institution.
Salt of the Earth is the second album by the Washington, D.C.-based group The Soul Searchers.
Sacha Jenkins is an American television producer, filmmaker, writer, musician, artist, curator, and chronicler of hip-hop, graffiti, punk, and metal cultures. While still in his teens, Jenkins published Graphic Scenes & X-Plicit Language, one of the earliest 'zines solely dedicated to "graffiti" art. In 1994, Jenkins co-founded Ego Trip magazine. In 2007, he created the competition reality program ego trip's The (White) Rapper Show, which was carried by VH1. Currently, Jenkins is the creative director of Mass Appeal magazine.
Roger Gastman is an American art dealer, curator, filmmaker, and publisher who focuses on graffiti and street art.
Go Go Live at the Capital Centre was a concert performance by various prominent go-go bands and hip-hop artists based in the Washington metropolitan area. It was recorded live in October 1987 at the Capital Centre. The double–cassette was released by "I Hear Ya Records" on December 18, 1987, and the video recording was released on VHS-tape by "G Street Express" on the same day.
The Beat: Go-Go's Fusion of Funk and Hip-Hop is a 2001 book written by Kip Lornell and Charles C. Stephenson, Jr. In 2009, an updated second edition of the book was published and retitled The Beat! Go-Go Music from Washington, D.C.
Funk Express is a studio album released in 1980 by the Washington, D.C.-based go-go band Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers.
