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Greg Tate, the author and influential cultural critic whose insightful pieces heavily impacted the world of journalism has died. He was 64. Tate’s untimely passing was confirmed by a spokeswoman from Duke University Press on Dec. 7, the same publishing house that helped to distribute the Village Voice staff writer’s follow-up to his culturally impactful book Flyboy in the Buttermilk.
The historic writer’s timeless piece featured a collection of essays that explored social, political, and economic issues while cross-examining the music of Miles Davis, James Brown in addition to other artists. It was a piece that carefully drew parallels between the Black experience and the music that birthed from it. Tate offered insight into the state of America with laser-like precision and his work would serve as a manifesto for aspiring music journalists. The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb commented on Tate’s passing following the news perfectly summing up how the Columbia University visiting professor’s 1992 classic gave inspiration to so many.
“Hard to explain the impact that Flyboy in the Buttermilk had on a whole generation of young writers and critics who read every page of it like scripture,” Cobb wrote on Twitter. “It’s still a clinic on literary brilliance. Godspeed, Greg Tate.”
Hard to explain the impact that Flyboy in the Buttermilk had on a whole generation of young writers and critics who read every page of it like scripture. It’s still a clinic on literary brilliance. Godspeed, Greg Tate.
— jelani cobb (@jelani9) December 7, 2021
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The Dayton, Ohio native’s prominent journalism career took off as a staff writer for New York’s Village Voice in the 1980s. Tate’s stellar writing was later published in The New York Times, Vibe and The Washington Post. The Source dubbed the Howard University alum “one of the godfathers of hip-hop journalism” for the way he highlighted the genre as though it were a “cultural phenomenon” NBC News noted.
Tate’s passion for music journalism stemmed beyond writing. The star formed The Black Rock Coalition in 1985 alongside African American rock group Living Colour to bring awareness of the genre’s origins from Black culture. The organization was also formed to seek equitable treatment for Black musicians across all genres.
“The BRC 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,” Tate wrote on the campaign’s website.
“Rock and roll, like practically every form of popular music across the globe, is Black music and we are its heirs. We, too, claim the right of creative freedom and access to American and International airwaves, audiences, markets, resources, and compensations, irrespective of genre.”
We can all certainly learn a thing or two from Tate’s legacy, whether you’re steadfast in pursuit of your dreams or looking to leave a mark on the world in a positive way. MADAMENOIRE remembers the cultural music historian through some of his most memorable quotes.
On Finding His Voice Through Writing
“I learned that you don’t have to be as brash or volcanic or profane to say what you need to say. It becomes interesting to figure out more modulated ways to be as effective and political and polemical even. You realize, after a while, your thoughts are incendiary enough; the language doesn’t have to also be on fire all the time.”– LA Review Of Books
Why He Admires Jazz Musicians
“They’re so masterful and so prepared to do what they do every night, that thing they do onstage. They have a living relationship with music. And they practice four to six to eight hours a day to maintain that level of craft. In terms of the work, the day has 24 hours — and you have a gig, that’s like maybe four hours out of your day. And since the day starts for them at 4:00 p.m., they might get up at 2:00 p.m., so what you do with the other parts of the day are pretty definitive. Some of the jazz musicians of the ’60s and ’70s were interested in life, in the good life. They were like gangsters in that way, classic Capone, eating well, dressing well, hanging out with fun people, being surrounded by sexually alive people in a sexually alive environment. When you get to Ornette, Shorter, Coltrane, Sun Ra, then you start to get these very cosmic philosophers, interested in making connections between music and life in really profound ways.” – LA Review Of Books
Capturing The History Of George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic
“Between 1968 and 1975, you opened up a Funkadelic record and you couldn’t guess what was coming next—a straight-faced take on the Fifth Dimension, like “Can You Get to That,” or a heavy-metal hydrogen bomb test like “Superstupid.” And go figure Cosmic Slop, where the title track, about a welfare mother who pimps for the devil, is followed by a country-swing ditty, “No Compute (Spit Don’t Make Babies),” about a hard d**k on the prowl who raps like a poolhall version of Jimi Hendrix and waxes philosophic the morning after about being turned out by a transvestite.” – Spin Magazine
His Descriptive Piece On The Legendary Jazz Composer Sun Ra & His Arkestra
“An interviewer once asked former Ra acolyte Jack DeJohnette if Ra’s music was “specific,” but anybody who saw the Arkestra multiple times in the ’70s and ’80s, as this writer did, knows Ra not only had tight arrangements but memorable lyric-laden hooks. You left the club or concert hall singing and swinging hella Ra ditties long after the ensemble had departed the stage, and hoped to hear them again on Ra and the Cosmic-Myth Science Arkestra’s next appearance in your town.” – 4Columns
On Hip Hop’s Impact In Black America
“Amiri Baraka once said that rhythm and blues would always be the accurate reflection of the emotional condition of Black America. Hip-hop is but the latest streaking comet in the metamorphic and meteoric continuum of rhythm and blues, the latest measuring stick and black mirror for all of America’s entropy. The truths spoken by hip-hop’s prophets are thus democratically applicable to all living under the reign of Mein Trumpf.” – The Village Voice
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