Chic 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 2002 Chic wrote and performed “A Black History of The Blues” for the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. In 2003 Chic co-authored and starred in “Passing The Blues Along” at the Crossroads Theater in New Jersey. In 2004 he was the arranger and musical director for the McCarter and Berkeley Repertory Theater’s production of Polk County, a play based on writings by Zora Neale Hurston. In 2005 he starred in August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at the Seattle Repertory Theater. In 2006 he composed the music and starred in Richard Wright’s Native Son at Seattle’s Intiman Theater. 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.
In 2005 he released his single CD "Sidewinder"

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." 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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