1. Greg Tate (1957--2021)
Greg Tate was a heavyweight champ among American cultural critics. There was nobody like him. Not his voice on the page nor the synapses in his brain that made supple and insightful connections nobody else would think of and at lightening speed.
Greg Tate was a heavyweight champ among American cultural critics. There was nobody like him. Not his voice on the page nor the synapses in his brain that made supple and insightful connections nobody else would think of and at lightening speed.
2. He once said, "I have come to occupy a somewhat unique position in the constellation of African American writing by keeping one ear to the street, one ear to the academy & a phantom third hearing organ to my own little artsy-fartsy corner of Gotham & Brooklyn’s Black bohemia."
3. He was inimitable. As always, the work survives. His essay collections "Flyboy in the Buttermilk" and Flyboy 2" are an imposing legacy -- especially the former, which belongs on the shelf with Ellison, Baldwin, Murray, Crouch, and Baraka.
4. I read a lot of Tate's pieces in real time in the Village Voice in the 1980s and '90s, and they were an important of my education -- along with the rest of a murder's row of critics and reporters then at the paper: Crouch, Giddins, Hentoff, Newfield, Ridgeway, Gann ...
5. ... Willis, Kerner, Schjeldahl, Ireland, Goldstein. Only in retrospect did I come to realize that for all of Tate's brilliance, he was only six years older than me,and I was never going to catch up up to him -- the motherfucker.
6. I did not always agree with Tate's conclusions -- like, duh, since when is the value of a critic based on whether you always agree with him or her?
7. But he never failed to bring a subject to life in brilliant, singular, and entertaining prose and to illuminate corners of African American culture that I had never considered or made me understand music, art and culture that I thought I knew (ha!) from an entirely new angle.
8. He made me see the the world, people, and art differently, more empathetically, and more accurately. This is a big loss. The world was a MUCH more interesting place with Greg Tate in it. Peace to his family and friends.
9. Here's Tate bringing it in 1984,at the insanely young age of 27, connecting the dots between Prince, Eddie Murphy, and a young Wynton Marsalis.
villagevoice.com/1984/09/11/sta…
villagevoice.com/1984/09/11/sta…
11, From 2006 -- thoughts on black jazz in the digital age.
criticalimprov.com/index.php/csie…
criticalimprov.com/index.php/csie…
12. Here's a sharp appraisal of Tate from @huahsu published @NewYorker in 2016. newyorker.com/culture/cultur…
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