Marvin Tate (b. 1959) fired up Chicago’s spoken-word and musical scenes as the leader of the group D-Settlement during the 1990s. As he described characters from his city’s neighborhoods or offered bracing social and political commentary onstage, Tate’s band responded with a fiery blend of rock guitar, funk beats, and jazz improvisation. They also presented their own take on Afrofuturism. The group broke up in 2003 but reunited for a performance at Chicago’s Constellation venue in 2022 when their recordings were compiled for the Marvin Tate’s D-Settlement three CD/four LP collection.Throughout the past thirty years, Tate’s own work has reverberated throughout different media. Other artists have recorded Tate’s lyrics, including for the album Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by Leroy Bach featuring Angel Olsen (2013). Tate also brought his poetry to the printed page in the books Schoolyard of Broken Dreams (1994) and The Amazing Mister Orange (2014). During summer 2022, he collaborated with Theatre Y to present the immersive play, Laughing Song, which blended the story of late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Black singer George W. Johnson with Tate’s own life story, and it was performed outdoors as part of a walking tour of Chicago’s West Side. An avid birdwatcher, his colorful assemblage of birds he constructed from found objects was displayed at Milwaukee’s 5 Points Arts center in 2021.Tate’s deep musical intuition alongside his empathy and humor in presenting often dark accounts of urban life echoes Gil Scott-Heron’s legacy (perhaps it is no coincidence that both were born in Chicago). He spoke about Scott-Heron for this interview over Zoom from his front porch in the city’s Avondale neighborhood on August 8, 2022. Since he is also a dazzling verbal improviser offstage, the conversation went in myriad directions, including discussing Tate’s childhood to his views on the current state of American society.
Aaron Cohen (Sat,) studied this question.