On Saturday, December 1, you won't want to miss a very special edition of the Soul Power show (8:00-10:00 p.m.) featuring my guest co-host Thomas Sayers Ellis, who will give you the real deal about the D.C. go-go sound that I love so much and have shared with you for years.

Ellis, who lives in Brooklyn and was born and raised in Washington, D.C., is an award-winning poet, photographer, and co-founder of The Dark Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts). He is also an Assistant Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, a faculty member of the Lesley University low-residency M.F.A Program, and a Cave Canem faculty member.

His fascinating photography of the D.C. go-go music culture has been featured in his solo exhibition, ((Un)Lock It: the Percussive People in the Go-Go Pocket), and in his upcoming project The Go-Go Book: People in the Pocket in WDC, which documents the "History of Go-Go and Black Folk Culture in Washington, D.C."  Learn more: tsellis.com/projects.html

His debut book,The Maverick Room (2005), is described as "the testing ground of determination and serendipity, where call and response becomes Steinian echo becomes hip-hop becomes a bootlegged recording hustled out a DC go-go club. "

Not only a documenter of the culture, Ellis was also an active participant as a musician and former member of a go-go band!  I'm thrilled to welcome him to WWOZ to speak on-air about D.C. go-go, his upcoming projects surrounding the culture, and to hear rare go-go recordings from his personal collection.

-- Soul Sister