Several American cities are identified with a kind of music. For example, New Orleans is known for jazz. Nashville claims country music, and Memphis calls itself the home of the blues. Washington D.C. is also known for a unique sound: go-go music. Go-go is often called the heartbeat of D.C. Most musicians and historians credit the birth of go-go music to Chuck Brown, a Washington D.C.-born musician who died in 2012. Brown and his band The Soul Searchers started their career playing mostly funk and rhythm-and-blues music. The songs got people up and dancing. But Brown did not like it when people left the dance floor at the end of a song. So he decided to keep a beat going on percussion instruments after the song was over. Over time, this ‘beat’ music became just as popular as the songs themselves, and led to the creation of “go-go music.” The music gets its name from how the music, like the beat, goes and goes, without stopping.