The distinguished US music writer Greg Tate has died at the age of 64, No cause of death has been given. His work encompassed hip-hop culture, jazz and so much more. Tate wrote for the Village Voice, Vibe and Spin among other publications and was an early chronicler of hip-hop in the 1980s. He placed hip-hop among the avant-garde, jazz and broader black culture in his thinking and his books included Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience and most famously collected writings from the Voice titled Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America which was published in 1992. He was also a member of the Black Rock Coalition from the beginning and as a musician played in the sprawling big band Burnt Sugar which we caught live in 2006 at a festival in Finland. Last year Tate co-curated an exhibition on Basquiat and hip-hop for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
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