Marvin Tate is an award winning Performance Poet. His combining of spoken word, poetry, theatrics and music has been acknowledged locally and nationally for over a decade. Tate first got his start performing the poem “We Real Cool” by the late Gwendolyn Brooks, on a schoolyard in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, North Lawndale, in 1970.

Years later the shy and angry Tate became a powerful fixture in the Chicago poetry scene, which introduced him to various organizations and poetry entrepreneurs. Micheal Warr and Luis Rodriguez, award winning poets, published his poems with the independent Tia Chucha Press. This resulted in Tate’s first book of poems,Schoolyard of Broken Dreams.  During that same period, Tate formed the experimental funk band D-Settlement, a hybrid of raw spoken word, gospel/soul harmonies and in-your-face theatrics. The band recorded three CDs and received critical reviews from the Chicago Tribune and Reader, sharing the stage with the likes of Ken Nordine, Wilco, the Last Poets, the AACM, Orso, P-Funk’s Bernie Worrell, John Langford, Niki Mitchell, isotope 217, the Spires, and hosts of others. With the demise of D-Settlement in 2005, Tate continued to combine his love for spoken word and sound. In 2007 he collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach (formerly of Wilco) to make his first solo CD, “Family Swim”. Unlike his previous outing Tate reinvented himself as a more “Waitsian” archetype (going for the mind and not the jugular).

Presently, Tate plays with an indie all-star cover band consisting of members of Chicago’s local indie/national scene, and with the art band The Black Monks of Mississippi. The band has performed in Europe and various museums and art houses in town.

Artist Statement

I collect objects (balloons, wine corks, miniatures, disfigured toys, insects, rocks, etc.) from thrift stores, back alleys, and my travels. I juxtapose them in recycled jars, old dressers and cardboard boxes to create social and political observations about class, race and sex. The results are an array of eerie snow globes, dioramas (with and without music) and an assortment of lighted and musical sculptures. Influenced by outsider art, punk music’s DIY aesthetic and class and race, the creations give off a tone of familiarity, hope and humility. My work has been showcased in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader and shown at the Rainbo Tavern, Around the Coyote Fest, The Chicago Tourism Board, the Hideout Holiday Show, the Peace Museum, Quimby’s books, Trash to Treasure, and the Intuit’s Gallery’s gift shop.