Preserving DC Music Culture and History:

Punk Archive Celebrates 1 Year Anniversary

Michele Casto, Librarian

DCPL collects and preserves DC community history, including collections that document the city’s rich

music culture. October 2015 marks the one year anniversary of the official launch of the Punk Archive

project. We’d like to extend our sincerest thanks to all who have supported this project by advising,

donating, volunteering, attending programs…we couldn’t have come so far without such wonderful

community support!

We’ve organized and digitized many items from our collections, and our staff and volunteers have been

hard at work helping us get them ready for use and to go online by foldering, boxing and performing basic

preservation for long term care and access. The Punk portal, our interactive website, will feature highlighted

collections, including photos, zines, posters and ephemera, as well as information about venues and bands.

The site will debut this fall.

Con’t on page 4

Fall 2015

“IT DON’T MEAN A THING IF IT AIN’T GOT

THAT SWING”: DCPL SEEKS TO BUILD

GO-GO

ARCHIVE…..page 3

Peabody Room Programming. . . . . 2

Dig DC Oral Histories. . . . . 2

Home Movie Day. . . . . 3

DCPL Punk Archive . . . . . 4

Special Collections Programs. . . . . 4

The Intelligencer The Latest News From Washingtoniana, Black Studies, & The Peabody Room, DC Public Library

The Best of Chuck Brown. Chuck Brown Collection, DC Com-munity Archives, DCPL.

DC PUNK ARCHIVE from page 1

DONATIONS to the DC Punk Archive since January 2015. Some highlights include:

Organizational records of Positive Force DC and research materials for Dance of Days from Mark Andersen

Oral histories conducted and donated by Annie Lou Berman

Posters from shows at Comet Ping Pong from Jourdan Betette and Sasha Lorde

Fliers, posters and artwork from shows at d.c. space from Cynthia Connolly

Poster collection from John Davis

Fliers and other ephemera from Bobbie Dougherty

Zines from Xyra Harper

Fliers and demos from Carni Klirs

Positive Force fliers and zines from Kevin Mattson

Fliers, posters and demos from Chris Moore

Radio CPR organizational records and radio shows from Natalie Avery and Amanda Huron

Zines, letters and photographs from Mike Ross

Zines from Jim Saah

Photos from Clarissa Villondo

Four Track recorder from Inner Ear Studio donated by Don Zientara

Special Collections Programming @ MLK Library

To acknowledge the 1 year anniversary of the DC Punk Archive, we will host a series of programming includ-ing: Glen E. Friedman, a live discussion moderated by Alec MacKaye 10/25, 2pm; and, DC Punk Archive Open House in Washingtoniana 10/29 @ 6pm. For more punk programming and updates, please visit dclibrary.org/punk.

Celebrate DC’s Legendary Musicians 10/31 @ 2pm: The DC Legendary Musicians will receive an official Proclamation from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Featured performances by Denyse Pearson, New Era, Jimi Smooth and the DCLM Band!

About Special Collections:

Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20001

Washingtoniana Room 307 202-727-1213

Black Studies Center Room 316 202-727-1211

Monday-Thursday 11am - 8pm, Friday-Saturday 9:30am - 5:30pm or by appointment

wash.dcpl@dc.gov dclibrary.org/research/collections

Georgetown Neighborhood Library, 3rd floor, 3260 R Street, NW Washington, DC 20007 Peabody Room 202-727-0233 Monday and Wednesday 11 am - 7 pm, 2nd & 4th Saturday, 9:30 am - 5:30 pm jerry.mccoy@dc.gov Special Collections projects have been funded in part by:

Peabody Room Debuts on C-SPN 3 With Talk on

Clara Barton by Jamie Stiehm

Jerry A. McCoy, Librarian

C-SPAN 3's American

History TV covered the

lecture "Clara Barton:

Compassion Under Civil War

Fire" presented in the

Peabody Room on

September 12th by Jamie

Stiehm. Stiehm, a Creators

Syndicate columnist and

contributor to USNEWS.com, discussed Miss Barton's remarkable Civil War

humanitarian work. Her future talk on personages from American History

will include Mary Lincoln on November 14. Please visit the following site for

the Clara Baton lecture: http://tinyurl.com/pz8gctt

All talks are held at 1:00 pm in the Peabody Room and are free.

New Oral Histories in Dig Dc: Community Focus Lauren Algee, Digital Curation Librarian

DC Public Library is proud to announce the publication

of three new oral histories in Dig DC, the online portal

to DCPL Special Collections. The collections include:

Milepost to Self-Government Oral History - first person

accounts of the quest for DC Home Rule from leaders

of the fight for self-government

South of U Oral History - video interviews telling the

evolution of the Shaw neighborhood before, during,

and after the 1968 riots

Latino Youth Community History Project - the

experiences of the District’s Latino community,

chronicled by young men and women in a project

funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The library has digitized nearly 500 audiocassette

tapes from its oral history collection and is steadily

working to bring these preserved interviews online for

public access and research. Look for more first-person

interviews documenting the history of the District coming to Dig DC soon!

Learn about how to digitize and preserve your family’s home films and

videos. See exciting home movies from the growing collection of home

movies at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American

History and Culture, DC Public Library Special Collections, and Playback

the Tape @ the Southwest Branch Library on October 24, 2015. For

more information about Home Movie Day and future DCPL preservation

workshops, please visit www.dcpl.org.

“It Don’t Mean A Thing: If It Ain’t Got

That Go-Go Swing” from page 1

Derek Gray, Archivist

As New Orleans is known for jazz and New York is considered

the birthplace of hip-hop, native Washingtonians can claim

“go-go” music as their own as well.

A music subgenre of funk that originated in Washington, DC dur-

ing the mid-1960s – late 1970s, go-go reached its pinnacle during

the 1990s and remains popular as a regional music style today. In

an effort to establish a broad, multi-genre DC Music Archive at the

DC Public Library, the Special

Collections Department has been actively building a go-go

archival collection since 2012 after the death of Chuck Brown, the

“Godfather of Go-Go.” This year on, Brown’s birthday (August

22), the library hosted an all-day tribute to honor the legacy of this

renowned artist. The program featured a go-go film

festival, exhibit of go-go memorabilia, a music listening station,

and live performances by several local performing artists,

including Curtis Johnson and the Eternal Mixx Band.

The purpose of the Go-Go Archive is to collect, document, and

preserve the legacy of this important community within the

political, social, and cultural history of the District of Columbia.

Items of interest for the Archive include audiocassette tapes, CDs,

flyers, articles, books, magazines, posters, videos, DVDs, and

other types of

memorabilia.

For more information about the Archive and/or if you are interest-

ed in donating items, please contact Derek Gray, Archivist, at

(202) 727-2272 or derek.gray2@dc.gov.

Image caption: Spectator at Home Rule Hearing, 1972, Washington Evening Star Collection, © Washington Post

Carte-de-visite detail of Mary Lincoln taken 1862 by Matthew Brady. Peabody Room, Collection #95, Mrs. A. T. Brown Album.

Chuck Brown in Annapolis, MD 2011

Godfather of Go-Go, wire statue by Arthur Washington. Donated to Go-Go archive by artist in 2012.

Jerry A. McCoy introduces Jamie Stiehm in the

Peabody Room at the Georgetown Branch Library