American writer, musician, and producer (1957?2021)
Greg Tate
|
---|
|
Born
| Gregory Stephen Tate
(
1957-10-14
)
October 14, 1957
|
---|
Died
| December 7, 2021
(2021-12-07)
(aged 64)
|
---|
Alma mater
| Howard University
|
---|
Occupation(s)
| Cultural critic, journalist, author, musician
|
---|
Years active
| 1981?2021
|
---|
Employer
| The Village Voice
|
---|
Notable work
| Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America
|
---|
Children
| 1
|
---|
Gregory Stephen Tate
(October 14, 1957 – December 7, 2021) was an American writer, musician, and
producer
. A long-time critic for
The Village Voice
, Tate focused particularly on
African-American music
and
culture
, helping to establish
hip-hop
as a genre worthy of music criticism.
Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America
(1992) collected 40 of his works for the
Voice
and he published a sequel,
Flyboy 2
, in 2016. A musician himself, he was a founding member of the
Black Rock Coalition
and the leader of
Burnt Sugar
.
[1]
In 2024, Tate was posthumously awarded a
Pulitzer Prize
, a Special Citation award.
[2]
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Gregory Stephen Tate was born on October 14, 1957,
[3]
in
Dayton, Ohio
.
[1]
[4]
When he was 13 years old, his family moved to
Washington, D.C.
[5]
[6]
His parents Charles and Florence (Grinner) Tate were
civil rights movement
activists involved in the
Congress of Racial Equality
, and played
Malcolm X
speeches and
Nina Simone
's music around the house.
[3]
Tate credited
Amiri Baraka
's
Black Music
and
Rolling Stone
, which he first read when he was 14, with stimulating his interest in collecting and writing about music.
[7]
As a teenager, Tate taught himself how to play guitar. He attended
Howard University
, where he studied journalism and film.
[8]
Career
[
edit
]
Early career and music
[
edit
]
In 1981, following an introduction by family friend
Thulani Davis
,
[3]
The Village Voice
critic
Robert Christgau
asked Tate to contribute to the
Voice.
[9]
The following year Tate moved to
New York City
, where he developed friendships with other musicians, including
James "Blood" Ulmer
and
Vernon Reid
.
[9]
In 1985, he co-founded the
Black Rock Coalition
(BRC) with some of the African-American musicians he knew who had a common interest in playing
rock music
, writing in a manifesto that the group "opposes those racist and reactionary forces within the American music industry which undermine and purloin our musical legacy and deny Black artists the expressive freedom and economic rewards that our Caucasian counterparts enjoy as a matter of course".
[8]
[10]
In 1999, Tate established
Burnt Sugar
, an
improvisational
ensemble that varies in size between 13 and 35 musicians and blended a range of genres including
funk
,
free jazz
, and
psychedelic rock
.
[11]
[10]
Tate, who played guitar and conducted the group,
[10]
[12]
described it in 2004 as "a band I wanted to hear but could not find".
[13]
Writing
[
edit
]
Though initially a freelancer, Tate quickly became the leading critic on Black culture for the
Voice
and in that position, one of the leading cultural critics in New York City.
[3]
He became a staff writer for
The Village Voice
in 1987, a position he held until 2003.
[14]
He developed a reputation for "slangy erudition",
Hua Hsu
wrote: "His best paragraphs throbbed like a party and chattered like a salon; they were stylishly jam-packed with names and reference points that shouldn't have got along but did, a trans-everything collision of pop stars, filmmakers, subterranean graffiti artists, Ivory Tower theorists, and Tate's personal buddies, who often came across as the wisest of the bunch."
[12]
Tate's 1986 essay "Cult-Nats Meet Freaky Deke" for the
Voice Literary Supplement
is widely regarded as a milestone in black cultural criticism;
[15]
in the essay, he juxtaposed the "somewhat stultified stereotype of the black intellectual as one who operates from a narrow-minded, essentialized notion of black culture" (cultural nationalists, or Cult-Nats) with the freaky "many vibrant colors and dynamics of African American life and art",
[16]
[15]
trying to find a middle ground in order to break down "that bastion of white supremacist thinking, the Western art [and literary] world[s]".
[17]
His work was also published in
The New York Times
,
The Washington Post
,
Artforum
,
DownBeat
,
Essence
,
JazzTimes
,
Rolling Stone
, and
VIBE
.
[18]
At
Vibe
he became a columnist in 1992, titling his series "Black-Owned".
[19]
The Source
described Tate as one of "the Godfathers of
hip hop
journalism".
[20]
A key contribution was his conceptualisation of hip-hop as existing on a continuum with jazz,
[12]
claiming for the former the level of cultural respect and inquiry the latter commanded.
[21]
In 1992, Tate published
Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America
, a collection of 40 essays on culture and politics, drawn from his writing for the
Village Voice
.
[22]
[4]
Writing for
Pitchfork
, Allison Hussey said, "It became a definitive work for Tate", treating subjects like
Miles Davis
,
Public Enemy
, and
Jean Michel Basquiat
.
[4]
Jelani Cobb
called the collection "a clinic on literary brilliance" with significant influence on other writers.
[10]
This impact on subsequent generations of critics was one of Tate's major contributions, with
Jon Caramanica
writing that "he affected every writer I cared about and learned from ? we're all Tate's children."
[19]
Tate often had the admiration of the musicians he wrote about, like
David Bowie
and
Flea
of
Red Hot Chili Peppers
; Flea cried in appreciation when Tate reviewed their 1999 album
Californication
.
[23]
In 2003, Tate published
Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture
, an edited collection of 18 Black writers addressing the topic of white appropriation of Black art.
[24]
[25]
The same year, he published
Midnight Lightning:
Jimi Hendrix
And The Black Experience
, an appraisal of the rock legend as a Black icon.
[26]
In 2016, Tate published
Flyboy 2
. In
The New Yorker
, Hua Hsu wrote that this follow-up to his first collection brought "into sharper focus" Tate's interest in what Tate described as "the way Black people 'think,' mentally, emotionally, physically", and "how those ways of thinking and being inform our artistic choices."
[12]
Later career
[
edit
]
He was the
Louis Armstrong
Visiting Professor at
Columbia University
's Center for Jazz Studies in 2009 and a visiting professor of
Africana studies
at
Brown University
in 2012.
[18]
[20]
In 2010, he was awarded a
United States Artists
fellowship.
[27]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Tate had a daughter, Chinara Tate, born circa 1979.
[28]
[3]
In New York, he was a longtime resident of
Harlem
.
[29]
Tate died on December 7, 2021, in New York City, at the age of 64.
[3]
[30]
That night, the
Apollo Theater
in Harlem displayed his name on the marquee in remembrance, its usual response for cultural icons.
[29]
Works
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Limbong, Andrew (December 7, 2021).
"Greg Tate, a powerful chronicler and critic of Black life and culture, has died at 64"
.
NPR
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
Blistein, Jon (May 6, 2024).
"Greg Tate Receives Posthumous Pulitzer Prize"
.
Rolling Stone
. Archived from
the original
on May 6, 2024
. Retrieved
May 6,
2024
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Risen, Clay (December 8, 2021).
"Greg Tate, Influential Black Cultural Critic, Dies at 64"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
. Retrieved
December 9,
2021
.
- ^
a
b
c
Hussey, Allison (December 7, 2021).
"Greg Tate, Celebrated Hip-Hop Journalist and Cultural Critic, Dies at 64"
.
Pitchfork
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
"Every Show Unique"
.
University of Dayton
. July 31, 2006. Archived from
the original
on August 5, 2012
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
Robinson, Amelia (June 15, 2009).
"Dayton native gets shoutout in 'Rolling Stone'
"
.
Dayton Daily News
. Archived from
the original
on July 10, 2012
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
The Independent Ear (October 30, 2009).
"Ain't But a Few of Us: Black Jazz Writers Tell Their Story"
. Open Sky Jazz.
Archived
from the original on May 6, 2017
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
Infantry, Ashante (March 23, 2008).
"Acid Funk Never Sounded Sweeter"
.
Toronto Star
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
"Greg Tate (c. 1958?2021)"
.
ArtForum
. December 7, 2021.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Shteamer, Hank (December 7, 2021).
"Greg Tate, Groundbreaking Cultural Critic and Black Rock Coalition Co-Founder, Has Died"
.
Rolling Stone
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
"Greg Tate"
.
Cooper Union
. April 12, 2010.
Archived
from the original on April 19, 2017
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Hsu, Hua (September 21, 2016).
"The Critic Who Convinced Me That Criticism Could Be Art"
.
The New Yorker
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
Tate, Greg (May 25, 2004).
"Band in My Head"
.
The Village Voice
.
Archived
from the original on October 22, 2012
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
Stein, Alex Harris (January 20, 2016). "Tate, Greg(ory Stephen)".
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
.
Oxford University Press
.
doi
:
10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.a2289548
.
ISBN
9781561592630
.
- ^
a
b
Lordi, Emily (July 26, 2017).
"Post-Soul Aesthetics"
.
Oxford Bibliographies Online
.
Archived
from the original on April 20, 2018
. Retrieved
April 21,
2018
.
- ^
Vincent, Rickey
(June 25, 2003).
"Black Music and Ivory Towers"
.
The Washington Post
.
Archived
from the original on April 21, 2018
. Retrieved
April 19,
2018
.
- ^
Tate, Greg (December 1986).
"Cult-Nats Meet Freaky Deke"
.
Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America
. New York:
Simon & Schuster
(published 1992). p.
201
.
ISBN
0-671-72965-9
.
- ^
a
b
"Greg Tate: Visiting Professor of Africana Studies"
.
Brown University
.
Archived
from the original on February 6, 2013
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
Caramanica, Jon (December 8, 2021).
"The Peerless Imagination of Greg Tate"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
.
Archived
from the original on December 8, 2021
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
- ^
a
b
Casey, Caroline (October 13, 2009).
"Visiting Professor Brings Hip-Hop to Columbia"
.
Columbia Daily Spectator
.
Archived
from the original on December 13, 2011
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
Romero, Dennis (December 7, 2021).
"Music and cultural critic Greg Tate dead at 64"
.
NBC News
.
Archived
from the original on December 8, 2021
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
- ^
"Nonfiction Book Review: Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America"
.
Publishers Weekly
. May 4, 1992.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
Sheffield, Rob (December 7, 2021).
"A Warrior for the Heart: The Gigantic Music Legacy of Greg Tate"
.
Rolling Stone
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
- ^
Lindsey, Craig (June 1, 2003).
"
'Everything But the Burden' by Greg Tate"
.
Chron
.
Archived
from the original on December 8, 2021
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
- ^
Dawes, Laina (September 20, 2005).
"Everything but the burden: An interview with author and cultural theo…"
.
AfroToronto
.
Archived
from the original on January 16, 2013
. Retrieved
December 8,
2021
.
- ^
Battaglia, Andy (July 29, 2003).
"Greg Tate: Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix And The Black Experience"
.
The A.V. Club
. Retrieved
December 9,
2021
.
- ^
"Greg Tate: Fellow Profile"
.
United States Artists
.
Archived
from the original on December 2, 2013
. Retrieved
April 12,
2012
.
- ^
Mirakhor, Leah (March 1, 2018).
"Fly as Hell: An Interview with Greg Tate"
.
Los Angeles Review of Books
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
- ^
a
b
Caldwell, Noah; Sundaresan, Mano (December 8, 2021).
"Revered cultural critic Greg Tate has died at age 64"
.
All Things Considered
. NPR
. Retrieved
December 9,
2021
.
- ^
Battaglia, Andy (December 7, 2021).
"Greg Tate, Influential Critic, Essayist, and Chronicler of the Black Avant-Garde, Dies"
.
ARTnews.com
.
Archived
from the original on December 7, 2021
. Retrieved
December 7,
2021
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Greg Tate
.
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|