THE MIT RIOT

On March 10, 1956, the G-Clefs took the stage at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium and Boston’s carefully separated worlds suddenly found themselves in the same room. Teenagers poured in from Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, the crowd surged, the stage gave way, the police arrived—and the newspapers got their riot.

Underneath the panic was the real story: Boston’s extraordinary Black doo-wop scene was already building the foundation of the city’s rock & roll culture. The G-Clefs are our way in. Boston Babylon follows those harmonies out of the neighborhoods, onto the radio and straight into the trouble that came next.