“With the boisterous delivery of a cool preacher, Marvin Tate sounds like Martin Luther King Jr. if he had a rapping alter ego. Written after a blackout hit his all-Black neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, his song “Turn da Fuckin’ Lights Back On” is a callout against systemic racism and a call-in to those oppressed by its violence. “Do you think poor people dig living like this?” Tate bellows. “Crooked politicians beware!” Through call and response, ad-libs, and multi-voiced choruses, Tate and his band the D-Settlement illustrate scenes of restless neighbors venting frustrations on stoops and street corners. Groovy synthesizers, sharp drums, and hi-hats transport you to the ’70s, making a case for communal jam sessions as a form of protest.” (Pitchfork)

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The Black Monks, formerly The Black Monks of Mississippi, has been a through line in Theaster Gates’ artistic practice. Their music is rooted in the Black music of the South, including the blues, gospel and wailings, but also linked to ascetic practices, related most closely to Eastern monastic traditions. It is an experiment around the specificity of Black sound and a way to give life to the abject everyday objects that Theaster Gates collects. The Black Monks often function as “amateur historians, senior docents, and non-sponsored bootleg preachers” expounding the word of art alongside the word of god. Through this gospel soul chant reverberation, Gates paints another picture of the potentialities within culturally specific but broadly received artistic practices. It is Gates’ body and the bodies of The Black Monks that help us understand that the black voice is a specific voice – even if the subjectivities of those voices are universal subjectivities.