About 12:30 a.m., we visited this place and found approximately 5,000 people, colored and white, men attired in women’s clothes, and vice versa. The affair, we were informed, was a “fag/masquerade ball.” This is an annual affair where the white and colored fairies assemble together with their friends, this being attended also by a certain respectable element who go here to see the sights.

This is an excerpt from a 1928 report filed by investigators with the Committee of Fourteen, a citizens group that fought to crack down on illegal alcohol sales inside New York City hotels. The investigators had stopped by a club in Harlem one night in February, unwittingly dropping in on a gender-bending bacchanal: the Hamilton Lodge drag ball.

Affairs like the Hamilton Lodge ball were a precursor to the modern ballroom scene, a performative, queer and largely African-American counterculture that still thrives in many U.S. cities, including Baltimore. The documentary Paris Is Burning captured the scene at its height in 1980s New York City, and Madonna — riding a wave of house music that soundtracked ballroom performances — got everybody voguing like a ballroom star with her 1990 hit “Vogue.”

Oct. 15, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art celebrates ballroom culture with a half-day event dedicated exclusively to the art form. The featured guest is Keith “Ebony” Holt, a veteran ballroom performer who’s also a youth outreach coordinator for Baltimore’s health department. He represents the Baltimore chapter of the House of Ebony — essentially a clique, or a family, of gay black men who perform in ballroom competitions.

Bandwidth spoke to Holt and the Smithsonian’s Nicole Shivers in advance of Saturday’s soirée. The event promises to borrow a grandiose aesthetic from Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare’s short film, Un Ballo in Maschera, on view now at the museum.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Bandwidth: Keith, can you talk about what ballroom means to young, gay black men? 

Keith “Ebony” Holt: Ballroom, basically, was created for [them]. It was a place that we could call our own [where] we felt safe. [In ballroom,] you could be whatever it is that you wanna be. As we all know, when a lot of young, black gay males or transgenders come out to their families, sometimes their families are not with it. They may out them or they may be like, “We no longer want to communicate with [you].” And for a person that may be 15, 16 years old — or basically whatever age you are — that really hits you hard. So the ballroom scene … gave you another family outside of your biological family.

“With this event, we’re in one of the biggest museums in the world. Now our form of underground art is being welcomed into the mainstream.” —Keith “Ebony” Holt

OK, so the film Paris Is Burning documented the ’80s ballroom scene in New York. When we talk about ballroom now, what are we referring to?

Holt: We’re talking about the whole entire scene. Voguing, of course, gets the most attention because it’s fun to watch and you have people like Madonna that came out with it, or you have Vogue Evolution on America’s Best Dance Crew. However, it’s so many other categories — such as runway, or realness, which is basically how well a transgender person may be able to blend into society. Paris Is Burning … is kinda outdated. The younger generations definitely took it and made it their own. So it has completely, completely changed. It’s not the same underground scene that it once was in Paris Is Burning.

Do you still do a lot of performing?

Holt: I do perform. I still walk. Voguing really isn’t my category. My main category is actually runway. You can kinda look at it like Project Runway mixed with America’s Next Top Model. Runway at the Smithsonian [requires you to take] a piece of African art. It can either be a painting or a sculpture, and you have to make your outfit basically represent whatever art that you chose to create. It really takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of brain energy for you to really sit and really create something such as that. Then… you actually have to walk like a model would.

Nicole, why did the Smithsonian want to do a ballroom event?

Nicole Shivers, National Museum of African Art: As the curator for performing arts, I’m always looking for something new, innovative and engaging to dispel the myths, the clichés of Africa. Being a big fan of Yinka Shonibare and especially this video piece, Un Ballo in Maschera, which looks at the grandness of things, what better fit than to look at the ballroom scene, where they can show off and show out?

Can you talk about the African influence within ballroom?

Shivers: The traditional masquerade, or the traditional theater-in-the-round [are African influences]. Also, it’s a way of conveying a message [and] honoring someone, so I think those are the two main similarities.

Holt: And I think that with just the LGBT community, we wear so many masks on a daily basis, especially when we go out. So many people look down on the LGBT community for various reasons, so we have to put different masks on when we just walk outside our house. With this event, we’re in one of the biggest museums in the world. Now we can finally take our masks off and say that we are finally being accepted. Now our form of underground art is being welcomed into the mainstream. Even if it’s just for one night, it’s still the beginning.

The Voguing Masquerade Ball begins with a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The ball starts at 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Shown at top: A still from Voguing For a Cause, produced by Great Big Story

“Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration” is a free, three-day concert taking place on the grounds of the Washington Monument from Friday, Sept. 23 to Sunday, Sept. 25. Co-produced by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the event ushers in the opening of the Smithsonian’s newest museum Sept. 24.

President Obama is expected to preside over the opening ceremony on the 24th, cutting the ribbon for a museum that was established as an Act of Congress in 2003.

Other performers on the bill include Stax Music Academy, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, 9th Wonder, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Josh White Jr., Dom Flemons, the McIntosh County Shouters and Jean Carne. D.C.-area dance groups the National Hand Dance Association and Urban Artistry also appear on the bill.

“The themes of the festival highlight the social power of African American music as a communicator of cultural values, challenges, aspirations and creative expression,” concert co-curator Mark Puryear says in a press release.

“Freedom Sounds” will run Friday, Sept. 23 from noon to 5 p.m. and the following Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Complete lineup and schedule information can be found on the museum’s website.

More on the National Museum of African American History and Culture:

• WAMU’s interview with Founding Director Lonnie Bunch
• Lonnie Bunch on the Kojo Nnamdi Show
• How The Smithsonian Is Building Its New, Sweeping Collection Of Black American Music
• Death Has Been Called the First Punk Band. Now They’re in the Smithsonian
• Smithsonian Acquires Collection of Classic Hip-Hop Photos
• J Dilla’s Gear Is Headed to the Smithsonian
• Inside the Creation of the Smithsonian’s African American Museum

Scheduled to open in 2016, the museum has already added some remarkable music objects to its permanent collection, including J-Dilla’s production gear, chic dresses from En Vogue, a replica of Funkadelic’s mothership, items from Chuck Brown’s estate and a drum from protopunk band Death. (Bandwidth has done a lot of reporting on the museum’s music acquisitions. Catch up here.)

The newly acquired photographs come from the Eyejammie Hip-Hop Photo Collection, spanning images by a range of photographers. Music historian and former Def Jam publicity director Bill Adler assembled the collection, which showed at New York’s Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery between 2003 and 2007, according to the Smithsonian.

Julia Beverly, founder of Southern hip-hop magazine Ozone and biographer of the late Texas rapper Pimp C, posted on Instagram this week that more than 20 of her images are included in the collection. Her photos feature Southern rappers Lil Jon, T.I., Slim Thug, David Banner, Rich Boy and Mike Jones.

Here’s the list of images Beverly posted on Instagram (warning: some explicit language):

The Eyejammie photo collection will be part of the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts, curated by Rhea L. Combs. Now under construction on the National Mall, the museum is scheduled for completion in fall 2016.

Here are some images from the Eyejammie collection:

Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim, 1996 (Maggie Trakas)

Black Sheep with World Trade Center in background, 1992 (Al Pereira)

Run DMC (James Hamilton)

Eazy-E in New York’s Union Square, 1996 (Al Pereira)

All photos courtesy of the Smithsonian.

Death turned out to be a hard sell. They recorded a demo, but record companies pressured the band to change its name. David refused. After years of rejection, Death split in 1977. Dannis and Bobby relocated to Vermont, starting families and new musical projects. They put their old rock band behind them, telling few friends about their days in Death. Back in Detroit, David struggled with alcoholism and other ailments, and in 2000, he died of lung cancer. Before he passed, he told his brothers to take care of Death’s recordings — the world would want to hear them one day, he said.

David Hackney, a founding member of Death (courtesy Smithsonian)

David was right. Vinyl diehards had begun to track down Death’s recordings. Then Bobby’s children caught on. What they heard stunned them — they could scarcely believe their dad had played in a band that sounded like punk before punk existed.

The 2013 documentary A Band Called Death tells the band’s story. Indie label Drag City Records reissued Death’s 1970s music in 2009, followed this year by a collection of fresh recordings made by a reborn Death, which includes Dannis and Bobby Hackney and their friend Bobbie Duncan on guitar. Death 2.0 hit the road. Each show, they say, pays tribute to David.

When it opens in 2016, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will have its own tribute to David Hackney and his group, which decades later has been called not just the first black punk band, but the first punk band, period. The museum acquired several objects from the Hackney brothers, including a mural, a tapestry and Dannis Hackney’s first drum.

Before Death headlined D.C.’s Black Cat in May, Bandwidth joined the band on a tour of the future location of the Smithsonian’s African American history museum. Dannis, Bobby and Bobbie checked out the construction site on Constitution Avenue, then headed over to the National Museum of American History to explore “Through the African American Lens,” a preview of the African American museum’s permanent collection.

Bandwidth’s creative partners the Wilderness Bureau captured the museum tour and Death’s stirring Black Cat show on video; you can see what we saw at the top of this page and on YouTube. But before the members of Death stepped onstage that night, they sat down with us in front of the Woolworth’s lunch counter at the American History museum and opened up about their unexpected legacy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Bandwidth: What is it like for you to walk through this museum and know that your band’s objects are in here? That you’re a part of history?

Dannis Hackney: I have been humbled. I mean, to see all the things that were done and the courage that these people had to mount up within themselves to do these things — the Tuskeegee Airmen, the Buffalo Soldiers. It makes you feel like you contributed, that our kind contributed. And until you come to a place like this, you don’t realize how much. We owe these people a lot.

Bobby Hackney: Just this exhibit behind me — of the Woolworth’s lunch counter — we owe so much to those four people who sat there. Just seeing this exhibit up close and personal, it just made me cry, as I’m about to do now — because I’m just so thankful for all the pioneers. There’s a saying: You can tell who the pioneers are because they’re the ones with the arrows in their backs.

Bobbie Duncan: For me, this place just lets me know how important education is. You always say if you don’t know where you been, you don’t know where you’re gonna go. To have these things recorded is more important than anything — to bring that to the kids who just didn’t know.

Dannis and Bobby, Death was your brother David’s idea, but he died years before the band found a following. What do you think he would say if he was here today, walking around this museum?

DH: You wouldn’t be able to get David out of here.

BH: Yeah. David loved museums anyway. It would just be incredible for him. I can actually feel his spirit right here with us now, because he predicted so many things about our story — that our music would get known. We’re living another one of David’s prophecies just being right here.

Dannis Hackney’s first drum, now in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection

You talk about that in A Band Called Death, the documentary about your band. In the film you say that David predicted Death’s eventual rise to acclaim. Is that what you mean when you talk about his prophecies?

BH: Oh yeah. That was just one of many prophecies that we’re living now. We have a tendency to call them “David moments.” This right here is a David moment. Because who would have thought that when my mom went into that department store to buy that unassuming garbage can that happened to look like a drum, that that would end up being Dannis’ first drum, you know? [Laughs] And that it would end up here? It’s an honor to her. I’m sure she’s in heaven laughing about this somewhere.

It seems especially remarkable because Death was an inactive band that you hadn’t told anyone about for more than, what, 30 years?

BH: That’s very true, because we went through a lot of rejection. We were an all-black rock band of three blood brothers on the East side of Detroit. Right during the early ’70s, very post-1967 Detroit riot. Most people told us, “Why would you want to play this kind of music? You should be playing James Brown, you should be playing Earth, Wind & Fire or the Isley Brothers.” We loved all of those artists, and we grew up with them, but we just immersed ourselves in rock ‘n’ roll. We wanted to play rock music.

Our production company tried to get record agreements or record labels to be interested in us from around the world, and nobody was interested in our music. They said two things: Our music was too fast, and the name was too scary. In 1970. There’s a million and one bands with names that make that sound tame today. So maybe the ’70s just wasn’t ready for us. And here we are.

“If you asked me if there’s anything in this Death story that I would trade, everything that’s been given to us, I would trade that to spend a day with David.” —Bobby Hackney of Death

But it also seems like when record collectors started finding the Death recordings, the name “Death” was part of the appeal. Maybe if you had had a different name, some people wouldn’t have picked up that record.

BH: Maybe they would have, yeah. They still said that our music was a little too fast. In the days of Detroit, the word “punk” hadn’t even been coined for music. In 1975, if you called me, Dannis or David a punk, those were fighting words. In Detroit, that usually meant one of two things: a black eye or a bloody nose. We were just trying to play hard-driving Detroit rock ‘n’ roll.

But I think due to the rejection and maybe due to the aggressiveness that made our music a little louder, a little faster, maybe that sound was the sound that the historians tuned into when they said that we predated the punk sound by about five years. And we’re grateful for that.

Yeah. You’ve been called protopunk, the first punk band, the first black punk band. But you weren’t trying to make anything like that.

BH: Yeah. We just liked rock music. We wanted to be like The MC5, like The Who, Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper and Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels and all those great bands that we saw in Detroit. We were just into the rock ‘n’ roll. Of course we grew up with Motown and we loved The Beatles, too, like everybody else did, so that’s basically what we were trying to achieve.

So what is it like now being called history makers? Is that surreal?

DH: [Laughing] When we buried that Death music, we never thought anybody was gonna say anything about us being history makers.

BH: That’s right. We never thought it. Timothy [Anne Burnside, from the Smithsonian] said something about a Harriet Tubman piece [in the African American museum’s permanent collection]. And when she was talking about that Harriet Tubman piece, she said this person just had this laying around. That’s almost the way the Death music was. When the world came knocking, there were only two songs, that little obscure 45 we released, and it was like, “Is there any more?” And we were like, “Yeah, sure, we got ’em up in the attic. You wanna hear some more?” [Laughs] And it just ballooned from there. It’s really surreal.

After reviving Death, taking part in the documentary, recording new music and touring, have you reached a point where you feel like you could make up for those hard times? Have you ever felt validated?

DH: It feels like validation, but to try to make up years — I don’t think it’s possible. If we could do that, if Muhammad Ali could take back the years that he wasn’t boxing, or we could take back the years where we was struggling just to buy instruments — you could take back a lot of things. But nothing in history can be taken back. So we just have to forge on with what we have.

BH: It’s a bittersweet burden that we carry. It’s almost like the emotion I felt when I saw this Woolworth’s exhibit right here. I just wish that my brother David could be here. Just like we wish that those people sitting at that counter, if they could just see, to be here. To see the sacrifice that they made, what they did, the difference that they made.

I think that’s the only thing that me and Dannis carry with us. It’s not a thing to be sad about. Because David said, “You guys are going to go on. The world’s going to find out about this music, but I’m not gonna be with you.” We didn’t accept it when he said that, because he was with us. We didn’t want to believe it. And now that we’re living it, I think that’s the only thing that — if you asked me if there’s anything in this Death story that I would trade, everything that’s been given to us, I would trade that to spend a day with David.

Bobbie, what’s it been like in this new version of Death, writing new material?

BD: It’s a blessing, to start with. I had a career of my own, musically. I had my rejections as well, and minor victories and all. [But] David had a way of putting things together. He said, “I’m going to take you somehow from New York and put you near my brothers.” And that’s what’s come along.

BH: That’s one of the things that makes the Death story even more amazing. It was David’s idea for us to migrate to Vermont in the ’70s. And we didn’t know nothing about New England or Vermont, you know? So we find out that according to statistics, in America, we live in the whitest state in the union. Now, how can we find a guy like this [gestures to Bobbie] in the whitest state in the union?

BD: It had something to do with something! Because really. Me? I wound up in New England through the circumstances — I had family up there as well. So I moved up there. Things might take years… but an hour to us is like a snap of the finger to God. I figured that he planned these things for us. He put my family up there, unbeknownst to us, that we would come together. It’s for a reason.

DH: That’s the strange thing about history. Like you said before, we wasn’t trying to make history. We were just trying to make a record that would sell. Those guys sitting at that lunch counter — they weren’t trying to make history, they were just trying to get a takeout order. Or even sit down.

BH: Just have a meal.

DH: History just happens.

Death is currently on tour. Check Drag City’s website for dates.

One of those places is San Francisco, which the museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation pinpoints as a kind of fertile crescent — and not just for BDSM, techies and multinational banks. It says thrash metal, the misbehaving child of metal and punk rock, flourished in the Golden Gate City, too.

A short film co-produced by the Smithsonian, Slayer: The Origins of Thrash in San Francisco, CA, looks at the role that San Fran’s music scene played in the growth of the pioneering thrash band formed in 1981 in Los Angeles.

According to the film, L.A. didn’t embrace thrash metal early on. Hair metal ran the scene. Extreme bands like Slayer couldn’t get gigs in town.

Slayer was “a little bit about being the anti-L.A. band, because L.A. was [where] all the hair bands were getting popular,” says guitarist Kerry King, a founding member of Slayer. “It was difficult for us to get bookings.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco venues opened their arms to thrash.

“I think the Bay Area was great for thrash because… we were really kind of ground zero for all this European metal making its way over stateside,” says Gary Holt, a Bay Area native who’s played guitar in Slayer since founding member Jeff Hanneman died in 2013.

Slayer: The Origins of Thrash in San Francisco, CA is part of an interactive map on view at the National Museum of American History in downtown D.C., and it’s also viewable online (watch it below).

The film is part of a series called “Places of (Musical) Invention,” which has looked at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, among other locations.

But where to start? I recommend vocalist Susana Baca, a highlight on Thursday night. Baca first came to the attention of the English-speaking world in 1995, when The Talking Heads’ David Byrne put her songs on a compilation called The Soul of Black Peru. Her vocals and music could be described as pan-Latino, but it’s the steady patting from a cajón that makes Baca sound distinctly Afro-Peruvian.

Baca, who has served as Peru’s minister of culture, has recorded with Puerto Rican reggaeton act Calle 13 and started a music school. She’s planning to record her next album in Cuba — a collaboration with singer Argelia Fragoso — but her last record was called Afrodiaspora, and attendees can expect her Folklife appearance to reflect that.

Los Wembler’s De Iquitos (Smithsonian)

Family band Los Wembler’s de Iquitos, another Folklife highlight, is the brainchild of Iquito native Samuel Sanchez who, in 1968, decided it was time for local dance music to go electric. He enlisted his five sons, borrowed a band name from the U.K.’s Wembley Stadium and developed a sound rooted in local dance rhythms and various South American, North American and British sounds the clan heard on AM radio.

Los Wembler’s de Iquitos — which includes a few members outside the family — nonchalantly dispense joyous rhythms that may at first sound like standard Latin dance-band fare. But bend an ear toward guitarist and songwriter Elmer Alberto Sanchez, and his ‘60s California beach feel exposes how hybrid this band’s sound can be. Los Wembler’s stayed busy during the 1970s and ‘80s, waned slightly, and recently made a comeback on the heels of a chicha revival.

The band’s many appearances at Folklife (schedule information below), the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage (July 3) and U Street club Tropicalia (July 10) are a boon for D.C. music fans; the band’s only other gig on this trip takes place in Brooklyn July 9.

Other Peruvian performers worth seeing include Tutuma, an Afro-Peruvian band featuring violin and guitar with three percussionists who tap dance and strut with dashes of hip-hop and carnival flair; as well as percussionist Alex Acuña, who is bound to trot out an array of drums during his Friday night showing.

Susana Baca performs Thursday, July 2 at 7 p.m. on the Ralph Rinzler Concert Stage. Los Wembler’s de Iquitos perform twice a day on La Juerga stage through July 4, at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage July 3 and Tropicalia July 10. Tutuma performs twice a day on La Juerga stage through July 4 and once July 5. Alex Acuña performs Friday, July 3 at 7 p.m. on the Ralph Rinzler Concert Stage. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival resumes today and runs through Sunday, July 5.

Culling from Virginia Traditions — a collection of recordings released by the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College and acquired by the Smithsonian — Bachman assembled an 18-track compilation of traditional Virginia music for Folkways’ new monthly series, “People’s Picks.”

Bachman’s playlist spans British-rooted ballads, prison work songs, piano tunes and shades of the blues, performed by white and African-American Virginia musicians between the 1920s and 1980s. Many of the tunes are steeped in local flavor, like “Sleep On,” performed by singers Lena Thompson, Lucy Scott and Lucy Smith to a soundtrack of crab-packing. Bachman tells its story on Folkways’ website:

This is a particularly interesting regional Virginia recording and one that I’m especially excited about, as I grew up eating a lot of crabs. The song narrative could take place in any number of Eastern Shore or coastal Virginia crab houses around that time. Behind the typical choruses heard on this tune is the sound of crab bodies and legs being cracked and packed into pint and quart containers. This particular recording was made in Northumberland County on the Northern Neck, at the Rappahannock Oyster Company.

Listen to “Sleep On” and the rest of Bachman’s playlist on Folkways’ site or via Spotify, below. (The institution says the playlist will also be available on Rdio and Rhapsody.) You can stream Bachman’s latest record, River, via NPR Music’s First Listen, too.

Purchased in New York in 1987, a year before Chuck D’s group Public Enemy would drop its landmark album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, the boombox had seen hotels like this all over the world. Public Enemy used it on tour in the 1980s, retired it, then brought it back on the road in the 2000s. For awhile, the hunk of metal played a role as a hallowed stage prop.

But now, in late September 2012, the hulking tape player was at the Westin hotel near the Atlanta airport, and Timothy Anne Burnside needed to figure out how to get it back to the Smithsonian in D.C.

“I’ve got a 9 a.m. flight out on a Sunday morning to Houston, and there’s no Fed-Ex open for miles,” says Burnside, a Smithsonian museum specialist who had arranged the boombox drop-off after meeting with the hip-hop icon. She couldn’t check it as luggage — Smithsonian procedure doesn’t allow that. “The only option I had,” Burnside says, “was to carry it on the plane.”

The stereo gave Burnside a headache at the security line and made her a minor spectacle. “I’m carrying a gigantic boombox through an airport, and some people are pointing and staring and taking pictures,” she says.

When Burnside finally stepped onto the plane, she says, the pilot gave the old boombox a once-over.

“Where’s that going?” the pilot asked. “The Smithsonian?”

Burnside does this for a living. She flies around the country hunting down music artifacts for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is still being built on the National Mall. It’s expected to open in 2016.

The Smithsonian’s Kevin Strait acquired a replica of Parliament-Funkadelic’s famed Mothership.

Burnside, 35, works out of a plain office building in Southwest D.C. when she’s in town. In November, her small, shared office looked like any other white-collar workspace, except for the revealing photos on her cabinets. They show her smiling with landmark figures in hip-hop and R&B: Kurtis Blow, Ice-T, MC Lyte, members of En Vogue.

The Smithsonian is called the “nation’s attic.” But Burnside’s work in music acquisition feels like it starts in the living room.

“I think it really smashes a lot of ideas about what the Smithsonian does and what it’s supposed to do,” Burnside says of the African-American museum’s growing hip-hop collection. “I think a lot of people put the Smithsonian museums into this kind of realm of long-gone history, and way, way, way back is how we can understand things and learn from our distant past. And that’s not the case.”

“I think [acquiring in hip-hop] really smashes a lot of ideas about what the Smithsonian does and what it’s supposed to do.” —Timothy Anne Burnside

Burnside is one of a few staffers tasked with selecting objects for the African-American Museum’s inaugural music exhibit, “Musical Crossroads.” Her colleague Kevin Strait, a historian and museum specialist at the institution, picked up some of its highest-profile music items. He scored a replica of the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership and some of George Clinton’s wigs. He got Curtis Mayfield’s famous glasses. When he was working on acquiring Chuck Berry’s famous Cadillac, he and the rock ‘n’ roll star ate an ice cream sandwich together.

Listen: The Kojo Nnamdi Show‘s related segment, “Preserving the History of African American Music“

Working with living musicians can be intimate that way. Sometimes they ring you up, too — whenever they feel like it.

“I got a random call from George Clinton at one point while I was eating my dinner,” says Strait, 40.

That intimacy is what can give Smithsonian staffers stories they might never forget — and Burnside has at least one. It started in 2010, backstage at D.C.’s Black Cat club, when she met the mother of a producer that left an enormous footprint on hip-hop: underground legend J Dilla.

‘The Smithsonian? Yeah, Right’

Before he died at age 32 after a long struggle with lupus, J Dilla — James DeWitt Yancey, also called Jay Dee — had brought a jazz-steeped musicality to rap music. With his use of organic-sounding drums and soulful samples, Dilla helped shape the sound of underground hip-hop and the Soulquarian era in the ’90s and early 2000s. Most of his work didn’t even graze the pop charts — and sometimes it went uncredited — but his distinctive production is found on songs from popular artists like Common, Janet Jackson and D’Angelo. And as new generations of hip-hop heads discover Dilla’s sound, his stature has only grown.

J Dilla (Stones Throw Records)

Throughout Dilla’s life, he maintained a close bond with his mom, Detroit resident Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey. She cared for him throughout his illness. Three days after his birthday in 2006, he died in her arms.

It had been four years since her son’s death when Yancey met Timothy Anne Burnside at a “D.C. Loves Dilla” tribute concert at Black Cat. They later chatted via email, only tentatively discussing bringing some of J Dilla’s belongings to the Smithsonian.

Yancey felt skeptical about working with the museum. “I wasn’t eager to talk to her or anything about it because it seemed so farfetched,” she says. “The Smithsonian? I’m like, ‘Yeah, right.'”

“I was trying to hold on, like Dilla was going to pop right out of the equipment or something and come back.” —Maureen Yancey

She didn’t fully grasp it at the time, but Yancey’s mind was also ailing. She hadn’t given herself a chance to mourn her late son. So she took her time, and Burnside waited, checking in and visiting Yancey in Detroit once in a while. As her trust in Burnside grew, Yancey’s feelings began to change about keeping her son’s music gear.

“I was trying to hold on, like Dilla was going to pop right out of the equipment or something and come back,” Yancey says. But she’d made a realization: You don’t give objects life by keeping them to yourself.

“These gifts, like the gift that great people have, they were given to them to share with the world,” Yancey says. “Not to just have for themselves.”

Four years after they first met in D.C., Burnside and Yancey stood on stage together at the July 2014 “D.C. Loves Dilla” concert at Howard Theatre. They were there to make an announcement: J Dilla was coming to the Smithsonian.

‘They’re All Connected’

“I don’t think either [Yancey or I] understood how popular the announcement would become, and what kind of a presence it would have on social media,” Burnside says. Her big reveal at the Howard Theatre — coupled with the Smithsonian’s own announcement the next day — reached millions of people worldwide. Their acquisition of J Dilla’s custom synthesizer and Akai MPC generated incredible interest in the museum, on a scale the Smithsonian doesn’t always see online.

Maureen Yancey and Timothy Anne Burnside with J Dilla’s MPC (Courtesy of Timothy Anne Burnside)

But when the African-American museum formally opens in 2016, its “Musical Crossroads” exhibit won’t just touch on hip-hop — it will place it in a constellation of African-American expression.

“We’ve got all of these things that are part of the story, and you can’t understand the whole without examining all of it,” Burnside says.

Yes, the museum has J Dilla’s gear and Public Enemy’s boombox (Burnside eventually got to a Fed-Ex in Houston and shipped it back to D.C.). But it also has a rare reel-to-reel tape of opera singer Mahalia Jackson performing on Studs Terkel’s TV show, donated by a Mainer who stumbled across it in a house he’d just bought. The glamorous silver dresses En Vogue wore in the music video for their 1992 single “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It).” A flugelhorn used by The Gap Band. Cassette tapes from Chicago’s house scene — including live recordings of huge figures in the music, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, donated by DJ and attorney Charles Matlock. Items contributed by Cab Calloway’s daughter. Four outfits worn on Soul Train. Key objects from the estate of D.C.’s godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown, which Strait can’t discuss publicly yet.

They’re all part of a shared tradition, Burnside says — a larger story of African-American culture and art. “You can stand in the exhibition and look at the Chuck Brown case while you’re next to the [Parliament-Funkadelic] Mothership, and then behind you is Chuck Berry’s Cadillac, and they’re all connected.”

The dresses En Vogue wore in their 1992 video for “My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get It)” (Courtesy of Smithsonian)

But as seriously as the Smithsonian takes its growing collection in contemporary music, there are still skeptics both from inside and outside hip-hop culture. Some wonder whether hip-hop has “paid its dues,” Burnside says. Does it deserve to be in the Smithsonian yet, alongside artists like Cab Calloway and Mahalia Jackson?

And what does it mean when a culture that started underground now has a home at one of the most prominent locations in the world? At a 2006 press conference in New York, Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons said he’d had doubts about donating his own materials to the Smithsonian, because hip-hop’s institutionalization could signal its demise. “The idea of hip-hop is that it’s from the underbelly, it’s from people who’ve been locked out and not recognized,” Simmons said.

“I’m coming in as an historian and explaining to these artists … why their work needs to be represented in the broader spectrum of the African-American musical experience.” —Kevin Strait

Of course, Burnside thinks hip-hop has earned its place in history — “Our argument, in a way, is that it doesn’t have to be old to be good, or it doesn’t have to be old to be influential,” she says — and J Dilla’s mother vehemently disagrees that putting hip-hop in the Smithsonian could somehow damage the culture.

“I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. I think that’s a fearful way to look at it,” Yancey says. “You can’t hold these things in. … You have to share. These gifts, like the gift that great people have, they were given to them to share with the world. Not to just have for themselves.”

Yancey says she’s been asked about compensation for her contributions to the museum. It’s a question that both Strait and Burnside sound familiar with, too, working for an institution that relies heavily on donations. When many of the culture’s stakeholders didn’t make much money on their art, what should the Smithsonian offer in return?

A part of history, Strait says. Most donors understand that being in the Smithsonian is about being recognized as a piece of something bigger.

“I’m coming in as an historian and explaining to these artists why we feel their work needs to be represented on the National Mall,” Strait says. “Why their work needs to be represented in the broader spectrum of the African-American musical experience.”

Yancey, who has spoken openly about her financial struggles, says that preserving her son’s work in the Smithsonian offered a longer-lasting reward than money.

“Someone asked me … ‘How much are you going to get for these things?'” Yancey says. “I said, ‘Don’t insult me. My son is not for sale.’ I want the world to know about who he was and what he did.”

* * *

Specialists from the National Museum of African American History and Culture are scheduled to appear on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show May 7.

Some music items from the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s collection will be on display in the exhibit “Through the African American Lens: Selections From the Permanent Collection,” opening May 8 at the NMAAHC Gallery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Top photo, clockwise from top left: Maureen Yancey with J Dilla’s music equipment; bass guitar donated by Meshell Ndegeocello; Kurtis Blow and Timothy Anne Burnside; dresses donated by En Vogue; Chuck D and Timothy Anne Burnside; Slick Rick and Timothy Anne Burnside. All images courtesy Smithsonian and/or Timothy Anne Burnside.

Swapping out friend and collaborator JG Thirlwell’s strings for a pack of horn players and just enough electronics to remain true to form, Danilova and Co. glided skillfully through a set composed mostly of songs from her latest LP, Taiga. When she wasn’t gliding, Danilova strutted elegantly or thrashed spastically in front of a jagged, geometric set. But her performance didn’t sacrifice sound for aesthetics—it tied them together in a stunning marriage: that of Zola Jesus and the museum. It felt like a piece to be studied, and a one-night exhibition much too short.