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 Chic
Streetman travels extensively performing in
clubs, colleges, universities, theaters, at special events, high schools,
middle schools, elementary schools, festivals and benefit shows. His
lyrics focus on the positive alternatives while entertaining in a spirited
manner. Chic's music transcends cultural and attitudinal barriers,
bringing home his message of equality and racial harmony through acoustic
bluesy ballads, funky rhythms and jazzy upbeat originals.
Chic is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz with
a B.S. Degree in Psychology. He served as Head of the Department of
Psychodrama at a Community Hospital in Carmel, CA; the Executive Director
of a Fair Housing program in Hayward, CA; and the instructor of a class
titled "The Creative Process" at Occidental College in L.A. before
deciding to focus exclusively on his music. He recorded his first album,
"Growing Up", in Paris, France in 1975. He toured throughout France and
later landed in Santa Barbara, CA where he founded Chic Street Man's
School of Performing Arts. In 1987 he released his second album, "Make It
Thru The Night". Chic was the Artistic Director of the Boston production
of the international play, "Peace Child", touring with the company in
Russia and Poland also in 1987. He was a featured performer at the General
Assembly of the United Nations in New York for the International Day of
Peace. In 1991 Chic gave benefit concerts for the United Nations Human
Rights Center in Geneva and in 1992 a benefit for relief to Somalia, also
in Geneva. In 1999 Chic returned to Geneva as a featured artist for the
United Nations Awards Celebration honoring indigenous care-givers.
Chic composed the music and starred in
the off-Broadway hit show, "Spunk", adapted by George C. Wolfe from three
short stories by Zora Neale Hurston and performed at the New York
Shakespeare Festival, The Crossroads Theater in New Jersey, The Royal
Court in London, The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, The Berkeley and
Seattle Repertory Theaters and The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He
received a 1990 Audelco Award and a 1992 NAACP Theater Arts Award for his
music and performance in "Spunk". Chic also composed the music for
"Permutations", a segment of PBS's "Great Performances" presentation of
George C. Wolfe's "The Colored Museum". In 1994 Chic composed the score
and starred in the Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of "The
Caucasian Chalk Circle". He was a contributing author, performer and
musical arranger for the Denver Center Theater Company's "It Ain't Nothin'
But The Blues" in 1995. In the year 2000 Chic composed the score for the
Alabama Shakespeare Festival's world premiere of "A Lesson Before Dying".
In that same year Chic composed the score and was the featured performer
in the Cleveland Playhouse's world premiere of "Touch The Names"--Letters
to The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. In 1998 Chic starred in the Mark Taper
Forum production of "Lost Highway", the story of Hank Williams, and has
appeared in the films "Triple Bogey" and "Hangin' With The Home Boys".
Chic was a featured performer at the 1991
Paleo Festival, the 1992 Montreux Jazz Festival and the 1993 and 2002 Bern
Jazz festival in Switzerland. In 1994 he released two albums, "Guns Away"
and "Everybody Be Yoself". In 1996 he released his fifth album, "Beau-ti-ful",and
in 2002, Lullablues.
Born in Augusta, GA, Charles Streetman
moved to the Roxbury section of Boston with his family when he was three
months old. He got his first guitar when he was seven.
"I didn't know how to play it but it was
mine. We didn't get too many things back then and when we did it would
belong to all of the children. But, for some reason I got a guitar and it
was all mine. It would just sit there in the corner and I'd look at it and
marvel over it. Then one day our house was burglarized and somebody put
their foot right through it. I couldn't understand why anybody would do
that. Why they didn't leave it alone or take it with'em. Why put their
foot through it? It didn't make any sense. Of course, that's when mama
said, son, sometimes things just don't make no sense. They call that
nonsense. But, out of nonsense...you make sense. Mothers are good like
that sometimes."
 A
decade passed before Chic got another guitar. By then, however, he showed
enough athletic ability to play semi-pro baseball and subsequently ended
up at Northeastern University in 1964 under the auspices of a program
intended to expose promising young blacks to higher education.
Chic's interest in music was growing,
however. "My older brother brought home a guitar one day and showed me a
couple of chords." However, still unsure about his calling, Chic placed
music on the back burner and eventually earned a degree in psychology from
UC Santa Cruz in 1971.
After these tentative forays into sports
and psychology, Chic had come full circle and was ready to channel his
energies. He took off for Paris, France where he met Pierre Barouh of "A
Man And A Woman" fame (Pierre had written the lyrics to the theme song for
this film. He'd opened his own recording company "SARAVAH" and later, upon
meeting Chic, invited him to do his first recording). Chic recorded that
year and toured all over France. The standard blues he played in France
earned him continual appearances on national TV and radio. But, "the
music," he said, "wasn't serving my total person. There were spiritual and
social and political issues going on in the world that weren't being
addressed in my music and I wanted to learn how to integrate it all." It
took a while, but that one year stint in France in 1975 helped Chic
determine a direction for his music.
Chic's musical tree is rooted in the
blues but branches out into many different directions. It has been placed
by critics into a potpourri of esoteric musical categories: acoustic
funk...cat-gut jazz...black people's folk...and urban folk. It bears the
fruits of reggae, folk, pop, and jazz. It may be all of that. "The feeling
with which I express the music comes from my own experience," said Chic,
whose moniker stuck when his uncle Willie called him "chicken" because he
thought the child was afraid of the nearby train, cars and dogs.
Chic's vocal style is perhaps influenced
by his own mother, Jannie Streetman, who'd sung on occasion with Fats
Waller. Waller wanted to take Jannie on the road with him and asked her
mother if she could go. Chic's grandmother saw stardom and fame. She
consented. But, Jannie saw a difficult time as the only girl and too many
men. Only sixteen, she declined.
Chic returned to the States and settled
in Santa Barbara, CA where he founded Chic Street Man's School of
Performing Arts while continuing to perform shows with some of the folks
who were at one time his idols...Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Lightnin'
Hopkins, B.B. King, Taj Mahal, etc.
Chic earned the title of "Musical
Ambassador For Peace And Human Rights," in part through appearances at the
U.N. General Assembly in New York, three appearances as a performer at the
United Nations in Geneva, and with his involvement in three Peace Child
theatrical productions touring to Russia and Poland.
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