In the video for Rare Essence’s 1992 hit single, he’s front and center in a white Norfolk State sweatshirt, commanding you to “Work the Walls.” In the video for “Lock It,” released the same year, he’s in denim shorts, leading a ferocious front line. He’s Donnell “D” Floyd, the go-go talker and saxophonist who fronted Essence for nearly 20 years, and now leads Team Familiar.

Floyd helped write Rare Essence’s most enduring songs: “Body Snatchers,” “Uh Oh (Heads Up)” and “Overnight Scenario,” plus “Lock It” and “Work the Walls.” Critics say today’s go-go bands have failed to deliver the same caliber of original tunes that the scene’s luminaries once did. That’s one reason Team Familiar, Floyd’s band since 2001, is taking part in Go-Go New Music Day. The first annual event kicked off today.

But while Go-Go New Music Day strives to smash perceptions that go-go has run out of ideas, its primary mission is to honor the genre’s founder, the late Chuck Brown. Floyd, who performed with Brown in the past, says he’s proud of Team Familiar’s role in maintaining the go-go innovator’s legacy.

To mark Go-Go New Music Day, Floyd’s band Team Familiar dropped a hard-edged track called “Straight to the Bar,” joining a range of other groups releasing new music, including The Chuck Brown Band, Be’la Dona, Backyard Band and Junkyard Band.

Team Familiar has long billed itself as a “grown and sexy” group, but “Straight to the Bar” reminds fans how versatile the ensemble — which features two members of The Chuck Brown Band and six expats from Rare Essence, including Floyd — really is. Uptempo, body-shaking numbers such as this one balance out their sultry R&B covers. Floyd says he’d like to record a whole album of originals, which the group hasn’t done since their early years, when they were still called 911. There’s just one problem.

“It seems to me a good while ago radio abandoned go-go,” Floyd says. “When you spend upwards of $15,000 to 20,000 in the studio and radio doesn’t support it, it’s very difficult to get the money back from it.”

Go-Go New Music Day doesn’t necessarily clear that roadblock — participating bands are releasing their new music digitally, and much of it isn’t available online yet — but the event draws attention to the fresh and vibrant sounds still emerging from the scene.

At a Team Familiar show, it doesn’t feel like go-go is in a rut. Onstage, vocalists Ms. Kim, Marquis “Quisy” Melvin and Frank “Scooby” Sirius hit the high notes, with Sirius and Melvin launching into the occasional falsetto battle between choreographed dance routines. A roar emerges from the back of the stage, as a grinning “Jammin’” Jeff Warren flicks his sticks on the trap drum set, Milton “Go Go Mickey” Freeman slaps the congas and Eric “Bojack” Butler wails on his timbales.

Floyd, meanwhile, seems as lively as he was in those ‘90s music videos, leading vocal chants, shouting out audience members and deftly guiding the band with hand gestures.

Floyd has a flair for the dramatic. In 2015, he organized an anniversary show for Team Familiar vocalist Ms. Kim, a 20-year veteran of the scene. She performed from a regal throne upholstered with red fabric. At Floyd’s own 30th anniversary gig at the Howard in 2013, band members rocked the grooves while situated on scaffolding above the stage, like Hollywood Squares.

“Donnell has always been that visual, let’s-be-extravagant-as-I-can type of theatrical guy,” says keyboardist Byron “BJ” Jackson. “He brought [shows] to life.”

But Floyd — whose busy schedule includes working a job at Verizon — believes in routine, too. He has a time-tested regimen onstage.

“Most places we play at, we play three sets. It’s a graduation type of deal,” he says. “We start off instrumentally with a nice, laid-back set. … Our second set we play a little more aggressive as people are getting their drinks and getting adjusted, and our third set is the most aggressive, as the audience has finished their drinks and they’re ready to party.”

This method helps Team Familiar fill local clubs every night from Wednesday through Sunday, whether they’re playing originals or current R&B hits. Meanwhile, it doesn’t sound like Floyd intends to abandon covers anytime soon. That would be going against tradition, he says.

“People were saying on the Internet that go-go has changed and is only now doing…cover tunes,” says Floyd. “But it seems like to me go-go has always had lots of cover tunes.” He points to Chuck Brown’s “Go-Go Swing” and “Run Joe,” both covers that the legend turned into signatures.

Despite criticism from some go-go fans and outsiders not keen on covers, the music still finds new ears and fervent appreciation, even from out-of-towners.

“I love D.C. people more than I can ever express, but I really enjoy watching people who haven’t grown up with go-go, enjoying go-go. This isn’t the normal, but they still think it’s great,” Floyd says. “Meaning, maybe we aren’t crazy to be still playing it after 35 or 40 years.”

A Go-Go New Music Day concert takes place at Howard Theatre May 14.

Tonight, the D.C. band opens the Radio One Holiday Jam with Grammy-winning vocalist Jill Scott, R&B group New Edition and songwriter/producer Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. It’s the latest step in the band’s progression from small neighborhood venues to big stages.

Black Alley has steadily played local spots like Bar 7 and the shuttered Indulj, moving up to larger venues including Merriweather Post Pavilion and now, the nearly 20,000-capacity sports complex in downtown D.C.

“Verizon Center was on my bucket list, so for it to come this soon is amazing,” says Black Alley’s Josh “Josh on Bass” Hartzog.

It’s a major plus that headliner Jill Scott “is someone we all listened to growing up,” Hartzog says. “Just to be on the same stage as her is pretty dope.”

A hybrid of rock and R&B, Black Alley has never lay claim to one genre. But its heart is in go-go. The band appreciates that Scott is no stranger to D.C.’s homegrown sound: she brought go-go swing to “It’s Love,” a highlight on her 2000 debut album, and she recorded with go-go godfather Chuck Brown before his death in 2012.

Go-go has been on a slide in the D.C. region, with gentrification taking a toll on the scene and local law enforcement cracking down on venues that host the music. Black Alley pays homage to the genre inside its chameleonic tunes.

“We are lucky that we can cater to more crowds and slide go-go in,” says drummer Danny “Animal” Henderson.

For Black Alley, getting to the Holiday Jam has required a lot of diligence. They take it “one show at a time,” Henderson says.

Authenticity may have played a role, too, says lead singer Kacey Williams.

“I feel like if you are going to enter the music scene in D.C., you really have to be honest and do what you feel is right for you with the music, as opposed to doing what people expect,” Williams says. “Because I feel like D.C. fans — more than any other — can tell when you’re faking.”

Black Alley is currently working on a followup to its 2012 debut album, SOUL.SWAGGER.ROCK.SNEAKERS. It’s expected out before the end of the year.

Photo courtesy of Black Alley.

Nationwide this week is called Banned Books Week. At the D.C. Public Library, it’s called “Uncensored.”

Banned Books Week was established in 1982 to raise awareness of books that people want off the shelves. It’s not an issue limited to the McCarthy era — even now, parents, leaders and various interest groups rally to censor or remove books from libraries for all kinds of reasons. But the D.C. Public Library widens the scope of Banned Books Week, looking at any form of expression that’s been challenged, including music.

That’s why the library has made a playlist for Banned Books Week two years in a row, says Maggie Gilmore, a librarian in DCPL’s adult information services division. This year, the D.C. Public Library Foundation asked her to compile a list of songs with a dual theme: censorship and D.C. music.

Gilmore consulted her fellow librarians for ideas and solicited input from attendees at August’s D.C. Record Fair at Penn Social. This is the resulting playlist, streamable via Spotify and YouTube, below:

Bad Brains, “Banned in DC”
Chain & the Gang, “Free Will”
Parliament, “Chocolate City”
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, “Run Joe”
The Evens, “Wanted Criminals”
The Cornel West Theory, “DC Love Story”
Ice-T, “Freedom of Speech”
Coup Sauvage & the Snips, “Don’t Touch My Hair” (JD Samson Remix)
Minor Threat, “Straight Edge”
Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”
Unrest, “Malcolm X Park”
The Blackbyrds, “Rock Creek Park”
The Roots with Wale and Chrisette Michele, “Rising Up”
Diamond District, “March Off”
Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up”

The playlist comes across as a celebration of outspoken music — not hard to find in this town, Gilmore says.

“[D.C.] is a natural environment for people to discuss political issues,” Gilmore says. Plus, she says, the city’s constantly shifting population can aggravate local tensions.

“With D.C. having so many people moving in and out of the city, there’s always been tension in the various groups that are represented in D.C.,” Gilmore says. She cites D.C.’s signature funk sound as an example. “Go-go has always been challenged by those who may feel it’s obtrusive — and maybe not even the music itself, but the social scene around go-go.”

The playlist debuted at last Friday’s opening party for “Uncensored: Information Antics,” the library’s new exhibit in honor of Banned Books Week. The show remains on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library through Oct. 22.

Gilmore says “Uncensored” and this playlist are part of the library’s larger efforts to document and support local expression in all forms. DCPL’s D.C. Punk Archive has been in the works for a year now. Gilmore coordinates the library’s series of punk-rock basement shows, meant to highlight its punk collection. After this, the library focuses on archiving go-go, then jazz, Gilmore says.

“Trying to highlight local music, [D.C.’s cultural] history and current artists — that’s one of the main goals of the basement shows, to provide a space for bands to play,” Gilmore says. “So this was an opportunity to continue on that.”

Related: WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show airs a segment on Banned Books Week Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. Can’t tune in? The segment will be archived on kojoshow.org.

Warning: Some songs contain explicit lyrics.

Via Spotify:

The Silver Spring photographer has been shooting photos and video of the contemporary go-go scene since 2010, and he captures conversations with D.C.-area musicians with a new web series called Locally Grown. Py’s videos live permanently on YouTube. His newest photo show, on the other hand, is one-night only.

Py plans to share and discuss some of his go-go images Monday, Aug. 17 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C., just in time for the late Chuck Brown’s birthday. The godfather of go-go would have turned 79 on Aug. 22. One of Py’s images can be found at the Chuck Brown Memorial in D.C.’s Langdon neighborhood.

The photographer says his presentation will be more than just a random collection of band photos on a screen.

“The photo talk is really designed for people who are somewhat familiar with the go-go culture but haven’t really been into the go-go culture,” Py says in a phone call. “I talk about the music of go-go and how it is distinctive and unique to Washington D.C. How it is a big part of the culture for African-Americans who have grown up and lived in D.C.”

But he has his own side of the story to share, too. “I speak to my adventure in go-go and my work with many of the bands, especially my work with Chuck Brown,” Py says. “A very personal adventure.”

Capturing go-go

When Py calls his photography a personal adventure, that’s important. He’s spent time in places, and with people, who are crucial to the go-go scene. He hung out at clubs such as Tradewinds, the now-shuttered Maryland go-go hall. And he worked as one of Chuck Brown’s official photographers in the final year of Brown’s life.

In 2009, Py was just another local shooter who had photographed old-school D.C. rock acts like The Nighthawks and The Slickee Boys. Then in 2010 he saw Brown perform at the annual National Capital Barbecue Battle on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. He took some photos from the crowd and got hooked.

“So I started shooting [go-go groups] Bela’dona [and] Da Mixx Band, and worked my way up to Rare Essence,” Py says. “I kept sending my work to Chuck and [his manager] Tom Goldfogle, and within three months I was onstage with Chuck shooting his shows. I quit my job and pursued this for two years.”

Between the summer of 2010 to 2013, Py went out three or four nights a week and came home at 6 a.m., he says. He enjoyed crossover-friendly go-go gigs, but he tended to prefer the late-night shows that attracted genre devotees.

“It’s much more interesting when the audience is engaging at eye level with the band,” Py says, “and the lead talker is talking about those people’s lives and what is happening that week, and whose birthday it is, and the guy who just got out of jail after 20 years and gets to come onstage and dance with the band. You don’t see that at the Strathmore Hall show.”

Py’s presentation at the library, which he’s shown only twice before, will include images of gigs by The Backyard Band, Team Familiar (formerly Familiar Faces), Suttle Thoughts, Be’la Dona, Da Mixx Band and Rare Essence in addition to Chuck Brown.

But Py isn’t shooting as much as he once was. He still regularly hits Silver Spring’s Society Lounge to see Team Familiar play its Sunday gig there, but he’s slowed down his go-go photography. He’s working a day job again, for one — and he also found himself in an artistic rut.

“For the most part I stopped shooting go-go two years ago,” Py says. “You can’t shoot the same thing over and over again and still have it be creative.”

So Py has channeled his love of documentation into his YouTube show that serves a similar purpose: to record D.C.’s music culture.

Locally Grown

Py has a green thumb. “I have a very beautiful — I call it a ‘yarden,” he says. “It’s no longer a garden, it has taken over the entire yard.”

Sunday afternoons he invites musicians to his backyard jungle. He grills up a meal and switches on his video camera for a chat and a performance. “Grill, garden and grooves,” he calls it.

This summer Py is recording 10 to 12 programs of artists playing in his garden. Each show runs for 15 to 20 minutes and features local musicians from go-go and roots bands performing original material and answering Py’s questions. He handles the entire production, from setting up microphones to interviewing artists to editing tape. He likes it that way.

“I decided I didn’t want to wrestle with cell-phone photographers in clubs for a position to video,” Py says. Plus, he’d been inspired by NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts, a series of live performances filmed at the cluttered desk of All Songs Considered creator Bob Boilen.

Py has taped Locally Grown episodes with musicians including keyboardist Marcus Young from The Chuck Brown Band, Esther Haynes and Hokum Jazz, Frank “Scooby” Marshall (aka Frank Sirius) from Team Familiar and The Chuck Brown Band and guitarist Genevieve Konecnik (aka Genny Jam), formerly of Be’la Dona and now with Pebble to Pearl.

Py usually wears something outlandish on his show — a tie-dyed shirt or a loud thrift-store sports jacket — and his enormous, phallic microphone adds a goofy, public-access feel. Occasionally, Py’s dog Bebop will wander into the frame.

The photographer says he’s “extremely uncomfortable in front of that camera,” but he sticks with it. “As a kid, I wanted to be a game-show host. I grew up on The Gong Show.”

Py admits Locally Grown hasn’t racked up many views online, but he’s happy with the project, and he suspects his guests are, too.

When go-go artists join Py in his “yarden,” he asks them to play original music — not covers, which many go-go acts play live. He also sometimes asks them to collaborate with people they haven’t worked with before.

“A certain joy comes out,” Py says, when musicians are doing that kind of thing. Take Claudia “Kool Keys” Rogers from Be’la Dona and Salt-N-Pepa’s band. She’d only met bandleader and violinist Chelsey Green once, briefly, but their dual performance on Locally Grown felt authentic.

It was the kind of creative chemistry Py wants to capture on his program.

“I put [Rogers] in a situation that she was a bit uncomfortable with, but afterwards she thanked me,” Py says. “It allowed her to be an artist.”

Chip Py shares and discusses his go-go images Aug. 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C. Free admission. The library also hosts a Chuck Brown tribute Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. The Chuck Brown Band plays a Chuck Brown Day concert Aug. 22 at the Chuck Brown Memorial in D.C.

This year Hammond — who goes by Kato — turns 50. After that Rare Essence gig, he went on to sing and play guitar in go-go bands Pure Elegance and Little Benny and the Masters and rap in Proper Utensils. In 1996 he founded the website that would become a news source for the go-go community: Take Me Out to the Go-Go. It’s still active today.

Today, Hammond releases his self-published memoir, called, of course, Take Me Out To The Go-Go. It’s different from go-go books like The Beat by Kip Lornell and Charles Stephenson and Go-Go Live by Natalie Hopkinson, which take a historical view of D.C.’s homegrown music. Hammond’s volume is instead a personal tale, exploring his life story and the hold that go-go has had over him for nearly four decades.

The memoir doesn’t discuss go-go like it has been in the media, either. There is little discussion of go-go clubs getting shut down, how white locals perceived Mayor Marion Barry — whose tenure coincided with the explosion of go-go music — or D.C.’s erstwhile reputation as America’s murder capital. Readers also don’t get full character studies of the stars of go-go, or details of how shows at Club LeBaron in Palmer Park compared to those at the Black Hole on Georgia Avenue or the Panorama Room in Anacostia. Discussion of Hammond’s website and magazine gets lost at times, too.

But we do learn a lot about Hammond — how a mugger made off with his leather jacket, whose pocket held one of his favorite go-go tapes; how racism affected him when he got wrongly blamed for theft in the Army. He writes about how he, as a teen, stole his lunches at school to save money for the $5 admission to Friday go-go gigs at Howard Theatre, where he looked down from the balcony, studying all aspects of Rare Essence’s presentation.

While the level of detail in his book — like his lists of seemingly every bandmate in all of his bands — may mostly be of interest to fanatics, he also offers glimpses of how Chuck Brown, Trouble Funk and E.U. differed from each other musically despite their common genre, and he conveys the deep sense of satisfaction he felt the one time he played a big go-go bill at Maryland’s Capital Centre.

In advance of the book’s release, Kato Hammond spoke to me on the phone. We talked about how go-go interfered with his love life, the pain he felt getting kicked out of go-go bands and his days at D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he met other students who would go on to be prominent go-go musicians.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Bandwidth: When did you start writing the book?

Kato Hammond

Kato Hammond: I had started it right at the time [go-go trumpeter and vocalist] Little Benny passed away [in 2010]. Because Benny used to always talk about writing his book, writing his book, writing his book. But he was always so busy, he never got around to writing it. He talked to Tahira Chloe Mahdi [a local writer and broadcaster also known as “99”] about getting together and her writing it for him. But it never happened.

I got more serious about it in the past six months. My goal was to have it finished by the end of the year. To make time for it. You’re a writer, you got to make time for it and not procrastinate and talk yourself out of it. Another thing was I turn 50 this year. I got kids who are older now. Two of them have kids. I just wanted them to know my story. I promised them. There’s stuff in it they don’t even know. They just knew daddy played music.

In the book you describe how, as a kid, you learned guitar in part from sitting in a small apartment room, closely watching a musician you knew as Littlejohn — from The Jaguars — perform.

That was pre-go-go. Even to this day it affects how I listen to music. Littlejohn would practice as if he was onstage. He’d have his microphone stand set up in his room. Before that I would just practice with my guitar sitting in my lap.

“I remember my cousin used to have his girlfriend hold the tape recorder [up to the speaker] while he was partying [at the go-go]. Then they would argue about that, with her complaining it wasn’t fair.”

It was interesting that you discovered that Rare Essence’s impressive choreographed dance steps back then were taught to them by the D.C.-based Bren-Carr dancers.

I just happened to later on find that out. Meanwhile with Benny, he’d go back to them to work on steps. I don’t remember whether I put it in the book, but when Benny was at that first Capital Centre go-go show — I wasn’t with him then — he was playing “Cat in the Hat” and he had four girls come out in cat outfits and [do] choreographed steps. That was them, the Bren-Carr dancers.

So going back earlier, in 1979, there was no problem with you bringing in a tape recorder to Club LeBaron?

Back then they didn’t stop you from bringing in a tape recorder to a go-go. Back then it was normal. Early tapes then were made by people just putting their big boomboxes up by the speakers and recording. I don’t know the detailed history of PA tapes, but I think that is when they decided to start taping shows from the PA board and stop allowing people to do it. Some people were dancing, some people watched the band and some people were recording. I remember my cousin used to have his girlfriend hold the tape recorder while he was partying. Then they would argue about that, with her complaining it wasn’t fair.

Hearing about you and all the teenagers getting jobs as musicians and other positions as part of Mayor Barry’s D.C. Summer Youth Program jobs had me thinking Baltimore needs something like that.

Exactly. I was talking with someone about Baltimore and they were saying, “Kato, you don’t realize how fortunate you guys had it.” I said, “You have a point.” But I think we were at the age that it was new at the time. We just had to remember to sign up before it was too late.

During your brief time at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, you met go-go musicians like Donnell Floyd and others.

I met and knew all of them then. I didn’t want to make the book just Donnell’s story. I don’t know if I put it in the book, but I remember in 10th grade, the rumor was that Donnell was in Rare Essence, but I didn’t see him with them. It turns out he was first just practicing with them and then he later joined them onstage.

Was it hard — with your family potentially reading this — that you write about and convey your guilt about stealing a car with your buddies and leaving the woman in tears?

I put that in to show what kind of trouble youth can get into when they don’t have an outlet. If I had not met the girlfriend who went to Duke Ellington School, if I hadn’t known the girl at Bowie High who told me about the playwriting contest that brought me up to New York, that was all like a whole different new world. I was trying to show that youth don’t know what’s out there because they have never seen or experienced it.

The car thing was a spur-of-the-moment, dumb thing. I don’t fault the mother of that youth [hitting him and keeping him out of rioting] in Baltimore. With the youth, it’s that peer thing and not realizing the seriousness of it. I think that situation later — when I got robbed — was probably my get-back for what I did earlier.

“Every relationship I was in ended because of go-go. My marriage ended because of TMOTTGoGo.”

You briefly mentioned after returning from the Army becoming a father and getting sole custody of your daughter Krystina, and your aunt June helped take care of her.

That was a whole story in itself, but I didn’t put it in the book. She’s 27 now.

How did you decide what non-go-go stuff to put in the book and what to omit?

I knew I did not want to put her in there. Even later on, you notice I talk about different girlfriends… I mention my marriage, but not her name. I consciously tried not to talk about the details of my family life. I wanted to touch on a constant thing with me, [which] was that every relationship I was in ended because of go-go. My marriage ended because of TMOTTGoGo. I wasn’t actively in a band anymore, but all my time was spent on TMOTT stuff. Her complaint was I was on the computer too much. I can’t win.

Getting kicked out of Pure Elegance and Little Benny and the Masters, and being told to switch to rap and not play guitar with Proper Utensils, must not have been easy.

I was crushed with the Pure Elegance thing. I was blindsided by both [dismissals]. With the Benny thing, I am real, real close with one of Benny’s sisters. I didn’t put it in there. When I put in there about living with Jacques [Johnson, a guitarist], one of Benny’s sisters lived with us, too. We weren’t a couple, we just shared an apartment. I was real close with Benny’s family. But I didn’t want to put that part in there.

“Egos were very big in go-go.”

When you went to see Benny perform onstage again a few weeks later, weren’t you worried Benny would tell you to leave?

Benny was never a bad guy. That wasn’t the kind of thing he would say. I was still close to his family and there wasn’t any animosity to it, although I was hurt by it. I wasn’t surprised the next guitarist [he had] didn’t work out. Sometimes you make the choice — do you want the best person in the world or the most dedicated? I would go with the most dedicated because they can get better. The best person might have too much of an ego. Egos were very big in go-go. The Pure Elegance thing was worse because we went to Bowie High together, and then we worked together in the day at the same job. So I was probably more thrown off by that then the other.

You said the TMOTTGoGo chatboard in the early years, before current social media, had lots of commenters. Do you miss that?

No, I don’t really miss it. Those people you see now on the Facebook go-go groups are the exact same people you would see then on the boards. We have known each other so long. There are people on those boards who have gotten married and had kids. The other thing is that back then, the Internet was fresh and new, and anything that anyone said on it got blamed on me.

Kato Hammond’s memoir, Take Me Out to the Go-Go, is available now on Amazon.

Some of this year’s most unforgettable local songs didn’t come from comfortable experiences. They sounded fed up, and particularly urgent in a year marked by growing inequity at home and multiple slayings by police in places that didn’t feel far away.

In one of the year’s rawest rock songs, Thaylobleu cranked up its guitars to tell a personal story of police harassment. Chain and the Gang and Jack On Fire assailed gentrification with wit and hyperbole. Punk band Priests declared everything right wing. Two remarkable hip-hop works channeled frustration and fatalism among young black Americans: Diamond District’s Oddisee cried, “What’s a black supposed to do — sell some crack and entertain?”, while Virginia MC GoldLink rapped about all the glorious things he imagines happening to him — when he dies.

Not that peace and love felt impossible in 2014: In a touching song released two years after his death, Chuck Brown sang of a “beautiful life” enriched by the warmth of community. Promising newcomer Kali Uchis made us kick back with a soulful number steeped in giddy infatuation. Experimentation thrived in D.C. music: Young artists built on the region’s strong punk pedigree and expanded its boundaries. Mary Timony’s band Ex Hex embraced a classic sound and made one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll records. Local bands with shorter but distinctive resumes — like Laughing Man, Two Inch Astronaut and Deleted Scenes — sounded better and more creative than ever before. A Sound of Thunder and Gloom reminded us that the D.C. area is still a reliable producer of top-notch metal.

As expected, Bandwidth contributors faced hard choices while making this list of the year’s best local songs, and not only because it’s our first one. Up until deadline, we were still hearing new D.C. songs we wanted to include. But in a place where mounting wealth has created a challenging environment for art, that’s not a problem, really. It’s a testament to a music scene that perseveres despite long odds. —Ally Schweitzer

Warning: Many of these songs contain explicit lyrics.

It’s been more than two years since the death of Chuck Brown, the originator of D.C.’s go-go music. But Brown’s family, friends and fans—along with the D.C. government—have spent those two years solidifying the bandleader’s legacy.

On Aug. 19, the posthumous Chuck Brown album, Beautiful Life, saw its release. On Aug. 22—Brown’s birthday and “Chuck Brown Day” in D.C.—the District unveiled the new Chuck Brown Memorial in Langdon Park. Meanwhile, the Chuck Brown Band plays on, performing locally and this Sunday, Sept. 14, during Adams Morgan Day. And as of this week, there’s a new Chuck Brown music video for the heartwarming title track from his final record.

Joseph Pattisall directed the music video that debuted Sept. 9. He’s also one of the makers of The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan, the 2013 documentary about D.C.’s best-known graffiti tagger. He got involved through Dave Braun, whose company Braun Film & Video Inc. produced a DC Lottery commercial with Brown. The finished product was cobbled together using existing video from Braun, Brown’s longtime mananger Tom Goldfogle and Pattisall’s own stash from the Cool “Disco” Dan film.

Like another music video Brown starred in—Thievery Corporation’s 2008 visual for the song “The Numbers Game“—“Beautiful Life” shows Brown in a setting that must be familiar to his fans: on the streets, in people’s neighborhoods, waving and giving out hugs.

“In the editing I decided to use no shots of the Capitol building or Washington Monument,” Pattisall writes in an email. “This was meant to capture D.C. without having to go that route.”

Over the decades in which he made music and lived in the D.C. area, Brown must have earned the regional title of Most Photographed Musician; he posed for so many pictures with fans, Washington City Paper (where I used to work) filled a cover with them soon after he died at the age of 75. Inside people’s homes, in shoeboxes and on refrigerators, there must be hundreds—maybe thousands—more.

Throughout the video, recognizable faces (singer Carolyn Malachi, Trouble Funk‘s Big Tony, community figure Tony Lewis Jr.) and regular people hold up signs with excerpts from Brown’s lyrics: “It wasn’t always easy,” “Don’t worry about the things we can’t control,” “We just pray and hope for the best.”

Brown’s daughter KK makes an appearance later in the video, delivering a few touching verses about her dad. On the grounds of Chuck Brown Memorial Park, she raps, “You wasn’t just a father to me, but a father to all.”