Greg Tate

For the Australian rules footballer, see Greg Tate (Australian rules footballer).

Greg Tate is an American author, focusing on African-American cultural theory and writing. He was acknowl­edged by The Source magazine as one of the 'God­fa­thers of Hip-hop Jour­nal­ism'.

An essayist and long time staff writer for The Village Voice, Tate has published widely, with writings on art, music, and culture appearing in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Spin, Artforum, The Nation, and DownBeat, and Africa-based magazines such as Glendora Review and Chimurenga.

The impact of Tate's writing lies in the seminal productive tensions he navigates between post-structural theory and black cultural nationalism; academia and street culture. Tate has been inspired by black innovators such as Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, George Clinton and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat . Furthermore, Tate has defied fixed notions about what constitutes authentic black culture, and has inscribed a new radical trajectory that is simultaneously rebellious yet intelligently written.

Now in his 50s, Tate continues to challenge cultural hegemony, writing on everything from hip-hop to YouTube. His books include Flyboy in the Buttermilk, Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience and Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture. He is also a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition and the conductor and music director of Burnt Sugar, a band that fuses jazz, rock, funk, and African music in a lyrical, exploratory and improvisational manner.

In 2010 Tate won a United States Artists Fellow award.

Works

• Tate, Greg (1992). Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-72965-9. 
• Tate, Greg (2003). Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0808-2. 
• Tate, Greg (2003). Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience. Chicago, Ill: Lawrence Hill Books. ISBN 1-55652-469-2. 

External links

• Chimurenga Library

This article uses text from the Chimurengal Library under the GFDL