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TGRIOnline presents the SOUL TRAIN HAPPY HOUR @ U STREET MUSIC HALL on Friday, 5-10 PM!

20 Sep
The first time I saw Soul Train was in 1983. I was five years old, and there was a tribute being shown to Marvin Gaye. In my household, the day Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father (April 1, 1984) was easily the saddest day ever. However, it was about a year prior to that where I became a fan of his while watching a Soul Train retrospective of his career as my mother sang and danced around the apartment while cleaning. I found Gaye’s music great, but pretty much everything else about the classic episodes of the program, from the fashions, to the dancing and Don Cornelius’ trademark baritone made me a fan of the show instantaneously and forever.

Don Cornelius was a visionary borne of the black empowerment of the civil rights movement. Noting that there was no ample televised showcase for the burgeoning Afro-American musical styles of the late 1960s, he developed a local Chicago TV show which became an LA taped TV masterpiece. Soul Train didn’t just showcase black music. It became a cultural touchstone of black culture, as well as being a place where African Americans were shown partying, having fun and crafting a lifestyle of empowered success within an American power structure that just ten years prior to Soul Train’s initial episode celebrated the denigration of black culture.

Fast forward to 2010 and the President of the United States is named Barack Hussein Obama, and is clearly a successful black man with roots in Chicago, Illinois. Kinda like the legacy of Soul Train. And much like Obama’s success having far greater importance than being a black man being President, Soul Train is far more than the expression of black people being shown with dignity in entertainment. Soul Train now occupies a place in cultural history of America as being simply cool, hip, funky and always on point. Therefore, this Friday night at U Street Music Hall, we’re recreating Soul Train. U Hall’s vaunted soundsystem is perfect for the endeavor, and I believe DC needs to get down as well. Throw in the fact that Don Cornelius has a birthday on September 27th, and you have a perfect event.

This will not be the Shemar Moore Soul Train either. We’re celebrating when Don was the host, from 1971-1993, the classic era, when the show was ultra important to defining black culture, which in many ways can be extrapolated to culture itself. We’ll have disco, we’ll have classic soul, we’ll have a LOT of synth heavy funk, we’ll have champagne and caviar friendly sanitized R & B. I’d love to get the makers of Pink Oil Moisturizer to hand out free samples, but you’re going to have to settle for something just as great, free copies of the EP of our Soul Train performer, Sherell Rowe. There’s a 30 minute Soul Train line too, and we’d love to say we have a Scramble Board, but that’s not quite confirmed.

Come out on Friday night as TGRI intends to take you on the “Hippest Trip in America!”