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THE ORG (@THE_ORG1): BACKBONE

The Organization, consists of three men who share a common vision for today’s music. Shawn “B Down” Chapman, Clinton “360” Smith, and Keaston “K-Dub” Wright met in 1995 while working out of the same studio on various music projects. Their true passion for music was the common thread that wove a tight bond between them. After working on solo projects as well as projects with other artists the…

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As we continue our celebration of Black Music Month

In the early 1970s, Chuck Brown laid the foundation for a new sound in Washington, D.C. That sound was called go-go music. The music was driven by teenage musicians and audience member. Obviously the music was heavily inspired by funk, blues, soul, and salsa. It’s polyrhythms and the use of multiple percussion instruments make it an exlplosive mix of sound that brings people to thier feet. Initially, “go-go” was the term used to identify the place where young people were partying, however in time, the funky, homespun music became known as go-go music.

Calling it go-go music in the early years made perfect sense because, between songs, the percussion section would continue to play while the band leader would engage the audience through melodic call and response sessions. This call and response method of engaging audiences became popular. The musician would holler out things that would engage the audience with such things as birthdays and graduations, which would always get a rise out of the crowd. They would also take time to acknowledge the neighborhoods in attendance, this would sometimes cause conflict but only rarely. All of this would happen openly over the music, the music would never stop. Due to the beat never stopping, Chuck Brown concerts were essentially marathon performances that kept his fans on the dance floor for hours. Brown described coming up with the idea of eliminating song breaks as a way to compete with disco DJs who enjoyed celebrity status among local partygoers.

The popularity of the new sound spread quickly and resulted in a fierce competition between local D.C. bands. In fact, there were dozens of go-go bands that popped up in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s. A typical go-go band had keyboard players, horn sections, string sections, multiple percussionists, and many were teenagers. Where did the formal music training come from, you ask? In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were strong music programs in D.C. high schools across the city, with heated rivalries between the school marching bands. Many of these marching band members used the skills learned in the school classrooms to become professional performers on the local go-go circuit.

During Marion Barry’s first term as mayor, there was an animation of D.C.’s cultural atmosphere, a surge in black pride, and a focus on providing jobs and resources for city residents. Mayor Barry’s Summer Youth Employment program made it possible for young people to gain work experience and income—and many brought musical instruments. During the summer which is notoriously humid in DC, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation used its Showmobiles (essentially portable stages), to provide free go-go concerts for the city’s young people. The bands were re-creating and covering many Top 40 hits of the day, adding the D.C. go-go rhythms.

With go-go music’s local reach expanding, several venues around town that formerly catered to disco, funk, and blues, decided to open their doors to these new bands. Several of the most popular venues included the Panorama Room (in Anacostia, in the southeastern area of the city), the Masonic Temple (on U Street NW), the Coliseum (in Northeast), the Howard Theatre, RSVP, and several more across the city. While many of these venues are no longer around, they are common elements in the history of the music. While the invention of go-go music is well-storied in the Washington, D.C., community, it has been largely overlooked by cultural historians outside of our nation’s capital. Unfortunately, commercial success hasn’t found its way into the historical narrative, other than Chuck Brown’s 1978 signature hit “Bustin’ Loose” and the use of a song by Experience Unlimited in the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s movie School Daze. It is interesting to note that even without tremendous commercial success, go-go music has thrived as a local industry. During the 1980s and 1990s, cassette tape recordings of live shows were sold by vendors and bands all over the city, functioning as a vibrant, secondary market for the music. The most notable bands were undoubtedly Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Rare Essence, Trouble Funk, Junkyard Band, and Experience Unlimited. Through strategic and savvy management practices, these bands enjoyed decades of success and helped the music to remain relevant over the years.

Much like the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx during the same period, this new music was developed within a community that was experiencing significant economic hardships. During the 1980s, Washington, D.C., was described as a city with two population groups—the visible and the invisible. The visible group consisted of tourists, the Washington elite, the federal government, and professionals who flowed in and out of the city. The invisible group was the largely African American, blue collar group that made up a fairly high percentage of the city’s population. The music flourished because, much like blues and soul, it encapsulated the full range of experiences in these communities and brought joy as an inexpensive, fun, social expression.

From the time of its inception, go-go music has existed as a raw, cultural asset that is owned equally by all of its D.C. fans. If you listen carefully, within the raw percussion and the funky grooves, you’ll hear the heartbeat and humanity of a very proud D.C. community.

HERE IS A BRIEF DOCUMENTARY ON THE HISTORY OF GO GO MUSIC:

  LIVE FROM D.C. BABY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GO GO MUSIC As we continue our celebration of Black Music Month In the early 1970s, Chuck Brown laid the foundation for a new sound in Washington, D.C.

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I Been Thinking - @MIRAGE512 prod. by DJ CROP DIGGIE

I Been Thinking – @MIRAGE512 prod. by DJ CROP DIGGIE

#7 FROM MIRAGE’s AMELIORATION COLLECTION. “I BEEN THINKING” IS A TRACK THAT FINDS MIRAGE REFLECTING ON HIS LIFE AND SOCIETY, WITH PRODUCTION BY DJ CROP DIGGIE OF THE SUPER STAR DJ’s THIS IS ONE TO RIDE OUT TO ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON AND HOPEFULLY IT WILL GET YOU THINKING ALSO.

https://soundcloud.com/mirage512/i-been-thinking-mirage512-produced-by-dj-crop-diggie

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THE STORY OF CHESS RECORDS

THE STORY OF CHESS RECORDS

Brothers Leonard and Philip Chess were two Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to Chicago in 1928. They were involved in the liquor business and by the 1940’s, they owned several bars on the south side of Chicago. Their largest establishment was a nightclub called the Macomba. The Macomba had live entertainment, many of those being blues performers that had migrated to Chicago from the…

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  The Last Poets laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop. The group arose out of the prison experiences of Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a U.S. Army paratrooper who chose jail as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam; while incarcerated, he converted to Islam, learned to “spiel” (an early form of rapping), and befriended fellow inmates Omar Ben Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole.

Upon their release from prison, they returned to the ghettos of Harlem, where they joined the East Wind poetry workshop and began performing their fusion of spiels and musical backing on neighborhood street corners. On May 16, 1969 (Malcolm X’s birthday) they officially formed the Last Poets, adopting the name from the work of South African Little Willie Copaseely, who declared the era to be “the last age of poets before the complete takeover of guns”. After a performance on a local television program, the group was signed by jazz producer Alan Douglas, who produced their eye-opening eponymous debut LP in 1970. A collection condemning both white oppression (“White Man’s Got a God Complex”) and black stasis (“Niggas Are Scared of Revolution”), The Last Poets reached the U.S. Top Ten album charts, but before the group could mount a tour, Oyewole was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of robbery and was replaced by percussionist Nilaja.

After the 1971 follow-up This Is Madness (which landed them on President Richard Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming lists), Hassan joined a Southern-based religious sect; Jalal recruited former jazz drummer Suliaman El Hadi for 1972’s Chastisement, which incorporated jazz-funk structures to create a sound the group dubbed “jazzoetry.” Following the 1973 Jalal solo concept album Hustler’s Convention (recorded under the alias Lightnin’ Rod), the Last Poets issued 1974’s At Last, a foray into free-form jazz; after its release, Nilaja exited, and with the exception of 1977’s Delights of the Garden, the group kept a conspicuously low profile for the remainder of the decade.

By the 1980s, however, the proliferation of rap — and the form’s acknowledged debt to the Last Poets. The influence can be heard heavily to this day in hip hop music and neo-soul.

THE LAST POETS: FATHERS OF HIP HOP The Last Poets laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop. The group arose out of the prison experiences of Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a U.S.

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  The Last Poets laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop. The group arose out of the prison experiences of Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a U.S. Army paratrooper who chose jail as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam; while incarcerated, he converted to Islam, learned to “spiel” (an early form of rapping), and befriended fellow inmates Omar Ben Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole.

Upon their release from prison, they returned to the ghettos of Harlem, where they joined the East Wind poetry workshop and began performing their fusion of spiels and musical backing on neighborhood street corners. On May 16, 1969 (Malcolm X’s birthday) they officially formed the Last Poets, adopting the name from the work of South African Little Willie Copaseely, who declared the era to be “the last age of poets before the complete takeover of guns”. After a performance on a local television program, the group was signed by jazz producer Alan Douglas, who produced their eye-opening eponymous debut LP in 1970. A collection condemning both white oppression (“White Man’s Got a God Complex”) and black stasis (“Niggas Are Scared of Revolution”), The Last Poets reached the U.S. Top Ten album charts, but before the group could mount a tour, Oyewole was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of robbery and was replaced by percussionist Nilaja.

After the 1971 follow-up This Is Madness (which landed them on President Richard Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming lists), Hassan joined a Southern-based religious sect; Jalal recruited former jazz drummer Suliaman El Hadi for 1972’s Chastisement, which incorporated jazz-funk structures to create a sound the group dubbed “jazzoetry.” Following the 1973 Jalal solo concept album Hustler’s Convention (recorded under the alias Lightnin’ Rod), the Last Poets issued 1974’s At Last, a foray into free-form jazz; after its release, Nilaja exited, and with the exception of 1977’s Delights of the Garden, the group kept a conspicuously low profile for the remainder of the decade.

By the 1980s, however, the proliferation of rap — and the form’s acknowledged debt to the Last Poets. The influence can be heard heavily to this day in hip hop music and neo-soul.

THE LAST POETS: FATHERS OF HIP HOP The Last Poets laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop. The group arose out of the prison experiences of Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a U.S.

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Fela Kuti was meant to be a doctor, an upstanding member of Nigeria’s elite like his father, an Anglican pastor who had founded the Nigeria Union of Teachers, and his mother, an aristocrat, nationalist and fiery feminist who had won the Lenin peace prize. His two brothers were already committed to the medical profession to which he was likewise promised. At 20 he would study in England, where his…

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Fela Kuti was meant to be a doctor, an upstanding member of Nigeria’s elite like his father, an Anglican pastor who had founded the Nigeria Union of Teachers, and his mother, an aristocrat, nationalist and fiery feminist who had won the Lenin peace prize. His two brothers were already committed to the medical profession to which he was likewise promised. At 20 he would study in England, where…

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Lil Simba (@LilSimba210) ft LooneyTune – It Can All End Central Texas own Lil Simba is back with another one "It Can All End". The video is a dope piece of film, it has a short plot and story to go with it. It is definitely worth a watch so..........................watch.

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New album from Arson Optics (@arsonoptics) ‘Sweet Tea’ Arson Optics is back with a new jaunt that will definitely go down smooth as a tall glass of "Sweet Tea" (pun intended). It's available on ITunes right now just click the link.

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Soul Train: An important part of Black Music History

Soul Train: An important part of Black Music History

Being that June is “Black Music Month” Quite Trill will be looking at the history of African American music all month.

Soul Train ( The beginning )

Soul Train was platform shoes, applejack caps, a living gallery of Afro hairdos and bell-bottoms….’It’s gonna be a stone gas, honey ‘– was the promise the deep-voiced Don Cornelius made…

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Did Drake Get @ Puffy & Joe Budden on "4pm in Calabasas" ?

Did Drake Get @ Puffy & Joe Budden on “4pm in Calabasas” ?

The track is inspired by a life lesson given to him by his father: “Mike never tried to rap like Pac, Pac never tried to sing like Mike.” Obviously, Drake didn’t listen — “I always said my mother gave the greatest advice.” 

Drake has now released “4pm In Calabasas,” his most aggressive rhyme in years, and he fires shots aimed at Budden, Puff Daddy, Chris Brown and more.

From the jump, Drake goes…

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Soul Power 74

The “rumble in the jungle” was an extraordinary heavyweight fight in Zaire in 1974 between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was won by Ali and with that victory he won back his world title against the odds.

The fight was the main event, but a three-day music festival, called ZAIRE ’74, also took place in Kinshasa, featuring some of the heavyweights of American soul, African pop and…

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QUITE TRILL RADIO #27 (THE R.I.P ALI EDITION)

QUITE TRILL RADIO #27 (THE R.I.P ALI EDITION)

Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer who proclaimed himself “The Greatest” and was among the most famous and beloved athletes on the planet, died Friday in Arizona, a family spokesman said. Ali had been at Honor Health Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, since Thursday with what spokesman Bob Gunnell had described as a respiratory issue.

“After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’…

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V. Nova ft. M.O.P. (@Mr_Vnova)- If I Ever Knew OK I admit I'm late on this video though we have been playing this jaunt on Quite Trill Radio since Christmas 2015.

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The Story of Funk – One Nation Under a Groove” Peep this documentary on funk and the bands and artists that made it all happen. It takes you from James Brown to Kool & The Gang and lots more.

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The Story of Funk – One Nation under a Groove”