Greg Tate was an African-American writer, musician, and producer. The focus of his writing was African-American music and culture. He was a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition and the leader of Burnt Sugar.

Tate was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Washington, D.C. He credits Amiri Baraka's Black Music and Rolling Stone, which he first read when he was 14, with stimulating his interest in collecting and writing about music. As a teenager, Tate taught himself how to play guitar. He attended Howard University, where he studied journalism and film.

In 1982, Tate moved to New York City, where he developed friendships with other musicians, including James Blood Ulmer and Vernon Reid. In 1985 he co-founded the Black Rock Coalition with some of the African-American musicians he knew who shared a common interest in playing rock music.

In 1999, Tate established Burnt Sugar, an improvisational ensemble that varies in size between 13 and 35 musicians. Tate described the band in 2004 as "a band I wanted to hear but could not find".

Tate was a visiting professor of African studies at Brown University and the Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies. In 2010, he was awarded a United States Artists fellowship.

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Greg Tate

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