A mixtape curated by DJ Lynnée Denise and Elissa B. Moorhead with a musical bookend by dream hampton, hosted by the Pan African Space Station (South Africa)
Liner Notes:
DJ Lynnée Denise:
Greg Tate was a jazz historian, a scholar of visual culture, a Black rock professor, and a master of memorial writing. His signature scarf, which he wore regardless of the temperature in the room, speaks to the world he built around his mind, the relentless quest and insatiable listening practice that turned his writing into a literary breathing technique. He was breathing circles onto the page. And with that I imagine Greg was caught between realms because so many of us called his name when he passed. We gathered. I wondered. How I could grieve and let him go?
The answer was music.
The first time we met, Greg and I had a three-hour conversation. He was in the lobby of a non-profit organization I worked for called exalt in Brooklyn. Greg agreed to host one of our events and was down to use his name to raise awareness about Black youth caught up in the carceral system in New York City. My colleagues understood that this must have been a long time coming because when I proposed he be our host, they saw that 'y'all don't understand, this dude is a giant among us' look in my eye. And with just a little bit of homework, they understood. Greg and I discussed our love for Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Bjork, and all things P-Funk. Naturally, Michael Jackson entered the conversation, which prompted an excursion into an analytical reading of Black tricksters in music (Prince, Lauryn Hill, and Miles, among them). There was an ease in our exchange that made me realize that whatever I had done, whatever I'd read, heard, saw, and felt—prepared me for a conversation with a literary legend and whatever it was I had done, Greg Tate, for the next decade treated me like a peer. For the past decade, we texted each other at least once a season to ask what the other was reading. I always had 1 or 2 books to share, but Greg had 7 or 8, and it seemed like Octavia Butler was always up in there.
Still, Greg and I had a longstanding beef. He once referred to disco as "DISCOINTELPRO," which was brilliant and offensive. He was part of a chorus of 80s Black music critics who believed disco killed the funk; part of the scholars who faulted disco for pushing black folk to the so-called post-soul era. I held this over his head for years, as a young queer DJ and student of Black dance floor music. Whenever I'd bring it up, he'd say, "I regret that statement. It's haunting me." Haunting can be meditative and create a space for reflection—stillness through transformation. Frankie Knuckles once said that "disco was house music's revenge," so when I rushed to Greg Tate's last post on IG, like thousands of others who wanted a small glimpse into his mind for just 30 more seconds, I felt the haunting of a beautiful ghost. I heard house music and saw him moving to the rhythm with an African finger piano, a Zimbabwean Mbira, to be exact. Greg was listening to Incognito's Nights Over Egypt (Bluey's Mix), a song where disco and house meet at the center. The haunting made a house music listener out of Greg.
Elissa Blount Moorhead:
It feels impossible to string together any words for our master wordsmith. They haven't quite congealed in my mind, but the songs I call in tribute to our beloved brother Greg are a stand-in for the appreciation and emotion I can’t quite explain. They, like him, are a representation of the vast continuum of Black music, as the intro to my dad’s radio show exalted; “from Sun House to Sun Ra from Eric Dolphy to Eric B.” Greg Tate rode the expanse of Black Art like a chariot. I first came to “know” Greg in the late 70s early 80s because of his family’s important pan-Africanist contribution to my Chocolate City. His cultural inheritance announced him. He then came full throttle to my consciousness through his show on WPFW; the aural manifestation of his otherworldly knowledge and electric love of the music, specifically, and “the culture,” more widely. I knew he was kin before I knew him in the flesh. He represented “us.” The voice at The Voice. I am so grateful to have eventually become a friend, a comrade, a co-conspirator, and to have remained an admirer, a fan, a student, and a witness to his poignant presence on earth. Much is, and will always be, said about what Greg gave to the culture with his signature colloquial and erudite style of prose. It will fill our intellectual coffers for centuries. Writing, Making, Sharing, Giving. He was/is generosity personified. He bathed and thus bathed us in all things Black and glorious. He was a Connector. He would sometimes call me the “patternmaster,” suggesting that I had a gift of community-making through telepathy, as Octavia Butler vividly described. I scoffed at that suggestion. We all know it was just projection. He was quietly the patternist and maybe even the whole damn pattern. He stayed singing the praises of everyone he loved and respected and made sure they all knew each other and shared thoughts and work. I thought my partnership with our mutual friend Arthur Jafa was of our own making. I later realized, of course, that it was a result of Greg’s nudging whispers to us both of how much we needed to connect and work together. He was right. Knowing AJ is knowing Greg, and vice versa. Together, they are one complete beautiful alien. I am enriched having been friends with two people that loved each other so well and allowed me to bask in, and learn from, their love. Greg’s influence over the pattern gave us all voice and direction. He was the ultimate world builder, and I suspect he is busy as an ancestor linking us all … lovingly conducting and connecting from the other side. Fly on Flyboy.
