[Video] Greg Tate Delivers Timely Keynote Address at SEM

Today, as the scent of 2015 is still brand new, we want to celebrate the lives of two lifelong activists who are very dear to the Musiqology family and who transitioned to the exalted realm of the ancestors in 2014: Florence Tate and Amiri Baraka.

Florence Tate was a Black woman, wife, mother, journalist, and activist whose spirit is more than the sum of those important parts. Living and working in a time when the world was even less friendly to women and African Americans, she blazed a trail upon which many scholars, activists, and reporters now tread. She was the first Black reporter at the Dayton Daily News and the press secretary for Marion Barry’s mayoral campaign and Jesse Jackson’s historic 1984 Presidential bid. Well into her 80s, Mrs. Tate insisted, “There’s still work to be done.”

Late last year, her son, acclaimed cultural critic, Greg Tate, delivered a keynote address at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Never one to eschew controversy, Tate’s talk dealt head on with the intersection of unchecked police brutality and Black popular culture’s responses to it. The title of this talk spoke directly to the heart of the moment: “Justice For Mike Brown vs The Silence of the Lambs, or Why Black Popular Kulcha’s Current Elite are Too Sold-out, Skeered and Glitch-assed to Soundtrack the Revolution in Ferguson, Mo.”

In the opening of his lecture, he spoke fondly of his mother, the fierce journalist and activist, Florence Tate. We mourn Mrs. Tate’s passing on December 17, 2014, yet celebrate that her sacrifice and dedication lives on through the work of so many others.

We dedicate this post to the enduring friendship of Florence Tate and Amiri Baraka and their unrelenting fight for justice.

(Video used by permission from Birgitta Johnson.)