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Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, DC club and restaurant owner Aman Ayoubi was struggling. Tropicalia, his eclectic global music room and bar in a basement at 14th and U streets NW, had been closed since March, and Local 16, his…

After months of intense advocacy efforts over equitable arts funding for go-go music, the DC Council has tentatively voted to allocate $3 million in the upcoming fiscal year for programs that will support the newly designated official…

On April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, then-19-year-old Southeast DC musician Lloyd Ashley Pinchback played onstage with singer/guitarist Chuck Brown for the first time. Brown, who died in 2012, is now widely…

Margie Clarke — one of four DC teenagers who formed the R&B girl group The Jewels in 1961 — had her biggest recording success three years later when their song “Opportunity” rose to No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100. A petite woman who…

An ambitious long weekend of DC go-go activism kicks off tonight as organizers continue the spirited movement that began this spring as an effort to turn back on the speakers outside a Metro PCS store at 7th and U streets NW. Among the…

The Folklife Festival is a little different this year. Scaled back due to complications from this winter’s government shutdown, the Smithsonian’s grand summer festival won’t be as grand in length or substance this time around, but will…

Following the #DontMuteDC protests that helped bring DC’s homegrown go-go music back to the speakers outside Metro PCS at 7th Street and Florida Avenue NW — and this month’s #Moechella music rally at 14th and U streets NW that reinforced…

The Wammies, a longtime Washington local music awards program last held in 2016, returned March 31 under new management from The MusicianShip organization. About 400 people filled much of the downstairs portion of the Lincoln Theatre for…

The Highway QC’s, a gospel group formed in Chicago in 1945 that once featured soulful vocalist Sam Cooke, is still going strong. The late Cooke is long gone, but the 90-year-old Spencer Taylor Jr., who joined the ensemble in 1956 and moved…

Former Gwar metal band drummer and current do-it-yourself world music promoter Jim Thomson is bringing a Puerto Rican punk-turned-salsa band, a Colombian hip-hop group, a “Saharan acid western” movie, and more to multiple DC venues in…

For decades, the Fort Dupont Park free concert series was legendary for its roster of nationally known R&B and jazz acts, performing all summer long, sometimes on both Fridays and Saturdays. This year’s 46th annual season, with just six…