Don’t call it an occupation — they’ve been here for years. In fact, until an untimely — well, actually quite timely for DC’s ravenous real estate developers — fire put it out of commission, there were a bunch of guys occupying space in front of the DC Farmer’s Market building, across from Gallaudet University in the Northeast quadrant of the city. They erected structures with wood, pallets, and tarps, but they weren’t camping there, and they weren’t protesting. They were working, selling, their hours as long as the market’s, six days a week. And what they sold was illegal.

No, not drugs. The vendors sold bootleg and counterfeit merchandise. Knock-off Nikes, mysteriously cheap Newports, CDs and, to use the jingle, “all new movies.” I quickly learned to avoid the DVDs: the new X-Men movie was terrible enough without the intrepid camcorder jockey munching popcorn and explaining plot points to his companion. My table of choice was the CDs, where I received a weekly lesson in go-go, the Chocolate City’s indigenous urban music.

Go-go is live band funk rooted in clip-clopping conga polyrhythms mastered by Chuck Brown’s band in the 1970s. When the rise of hip hop overshadowed any nationwide interest in go-go, the genre went resolutely local, and has stayed that way ever since. It’s still live band music, though by no means retro — bands have consistently experimented with the latest technology, including drum machines, samples, and delay effects. And bands incorporate current hip hop and R&B hits into their repertoires as fast as they hit radio, developing inventive cover versions of the latest Beyoncé or Drake hits. It’s been called the soul of Washington, a city most people assume sold anything resembling its soul a long time ago.