Chic toured all over France promoting this first record, "Growing Up" in which he talks about some of the complexities of young people growing up in America at the time.

He returned to the States one year later. He couldn't focus on writing while separated from his roots. He wanted to integrate in his music some of the social and political issues going on in the world at the time. Chic later formed a duo with "Mississippi" Charles Bevel. For several years the two traveled up and down the west coast sharing the stage with the likes of B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Etta James, Ritchie Havens, Mose Allison, Albert Collins, and many others. They completed their first soundtrack for the Neuropsychiatric Clinic at UCLA, "Black Monday's Children" in the Spring of '77.

Chic was professionally introduced to theater in Santa Barbara, CA as the musical narrator and hired hand in the Ensemble Theater Project's, "The Legend of Lima Beane". Not long after he was on stage as one of the young black men who taught Hank Williams how to play guitar in the Mark Taper Forum production of "Lost Highway".

Chic's biggest break in the world of theater came as a performer and composer for Joseph Papp's production of "Spunk" at the Public Theater in New York, adapted and directed by George C. Wolfe.

Chic was nominated for an Obie that year and won the Audelco Award and the NAACP Theater Arts Award for his performance in Spunk. Since that time Chic has starred in and composed music for many stage productions including Bertolt Brechts' "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" for the Berkeley Repertory Theater and "It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues" for the Denver Center Theater Company which went on to a very long and successful run on Broadway.

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SPUNK
In April, 1990 Chic composed the score and starred in Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival Production of Spunk, three tales by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted and directed by George C. Wolfe. The show opened at the Crossroads Theater in New Jersey then ran for six months at the Public Theater in New York before runs at the Royal Court Theater in London, The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and The Berkeley and Seattle Repertory Theaters.

The Story In Harlem Slang is a celebration of language and rituals of black people during the twenties and thirties. Two unemployed men, out and about on Harlem's Lenox Avenue, set their sights on the same young domestic worker on payday. Their ostensible object is to attract the woman and get a free meal.

In Sweat Delia is a married woman with only her job as a laundress and her love of God to sustain her in the face of a straying husband and his growing public humiliation of her.

The Gilded Six Bits has a gentle black man at the center of the story. Ordinarily it's the woman who's betrayed, and the woman who's expected to endure, and get over it.

Mr. Wolfe asked Chic to provide music for the initial reading of Spunk and later to design music specific to the themes in each story. Country blues is what he was looking for. Authentic and down home. Bottleneck blues. Funky finger-picking. Spunky rhythms to match the finger-popping doo-wopin' Harlem street slang of the times, known more popularly as "The Jazz Age." Chic Streetman was the man to provide that. And more.

PERMUTATIONS
Chic also composed music for "Permutations", a segment of PBS's "Great Performances" presentation of George C. Wolfe's "The Colored Museum" (a 1986 sharp-edged satirization of black American maternal stereotypes).

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THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE
In 1994 Chic composed the score and starred in The Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of Bertolt Brecht's, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", the story of a chaotic society in which a terrible war is being waged by one group over another for possession of property. Chic's music served as both the dispenser of Brecht's socialist philosophy and a connecting thread for the entire spectacle. A most interesting project for Chic. The Director wanted music to reflect a staging suggesting the story could have happened any where in the world. Not particular to any one culture. Chic's decision to implement elements of many cultures gave the music a kind of gentle driving omnipresence, creating a playful tension, and ultimately achieving the desired goal from the other way around.

IT AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT THE BLUES
Chic was a contributing author, performer and musical arranger for the Denver Center Theater Company's "It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues" in the Spring of '95. Chic toured with the show to the Cleveland Play House and the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. "Blues" went on to a long, successful run on Broadway in 1999-2000.

A LESSON BEFORE DYING
In the year 2000 Chic composed the score for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival for A Lesson Before Dying, a play by Romulus Linney based on the novel by the same name by Ernest J. Gaines about a young African American male wrongfully accused of murder in Louisiana in the year 1948. Grant Wiggins is a man caught in his own cycle of anger, resentment and frustration - teaching a frightened young man how to die. He ultimately succeeds after learning some hard truths about himself.

Grant: (To his student) Do you know what a hero is? That is a man who does something for other people. I'm not a hero. Never will be. I want to run away. That is not a hero. A hero does for others. I am a man who doesn't know what to do. I need a hero to tell me what to do and what kind of man to be. I need you to teach me that."

Chic was able to provide general underscoring for this production in addition to music specific to the scenes centered around the juke box in the cafe. Bluesy, rhythmic, danceable and favorable to the late forties.

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TOUCH THE NAMES -- Letters To The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
This production conceived by Randal Myler and Chic Street Man, with original music by Chic Street Man is a compilation of actual letters, stories and poems left behind at the memorial. Touch The Names had its world premiere at The Cleveland Play House in the Spring in the year 2000. Chic was also the Musical Director and performed his original songs.

The United States congress authorized the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1980 to honor those who gave their lives in our nation's longest war. Of the 2.7 million Americans who served in the war zone, an estimated 300,000 were wounded, 75,000 of whom were permanently disabled. Approximately 1,300 individuals remain missing and unaccounted for. The primary section of the memorial was designed by then-21-year-old Yale student, Maya Lin. It consists of two angled black granite walls, rising slowly out of the earth. Each wall is 246'8" long, its ends extending toward the Northeast corners of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

What sets this monument apart is a tradition that no one ever anticipated: every day hundreds of people leave behind notes, souvenirs and memorial gifts to honor the dead. The first such token was a Purple Heart, deposited into the wet cement when the wall's foundation was being poured. A Naval officer who was still grieving his brother's loss dropped the medal in the cement, then saluted, as construction workers looked on.

Normally, items left as the base of a monument would not qualify as "artifacts" until they are 50 years old. In the case of these objects, now numbering in the tens of thousands, the government has made an exception.

Now recognized as a sacred site and a round-the-clock tourist destination, the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial remains the most frequently visited memorial in the nation.

DAUMIER -- Witness To A Century
The story in animation of the life of the French painter, lithographer and cartoonist, Honore Daumier. Chic composed the entire score with the combined talents of his partner on keyboards, George Friedenthal . This animated film received an Oscar nomination in 1987.

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SWEET POTATOES IN THE OVEN
This is the story of Chic's great-grandmother, Hattie Smith, who at sixteen
is raped by a young white boy in Augusta, GA. Hattie is crushed when she
learns nothing is to be done with this boy. She goes mum and refuses to
speak. One day a guitar lands in her lap. To her it represents perfection.
She knows she can never be perfect again and this harsh reality makes her
want to smash the guitar the first time she lays her hands on it. She
treats the guitar instead as if it were a part of her own self. From that
day on she never puts it down. The guitar becomes the voice that guides her
back to the speaking world. She masters the guitar and becomes widely known
for her music and good natured spirit, sharing what little food she has and
playing for anyone who happens by. Especially the children. But, she
remains troubled inside. Unlike her guitar she feels out of tune. She puts
on a dangerous amount of weight and at thirty-seven announces that when she
dies she wants to be buried with her guitar. But, months later, shortly
before Hattie dies, her guitar is stolen. Many years later her four
daughters have decided to honor her by finding that same guitar or one like
it. Act I unfolds at Melinda's house, one of Hattie's four daughters.

"I so much enjoyed writing this story and composing the score. It's so close to me. It is me. It's country and down home. It's blues from the back country. It's up tempo It's sorrowful. It's moving with soul. It came without struggle. And it's still coming."
-- Chic Street Man

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ACT 1

SCENE 1

Lights come up on Melinda's front porch. Corinna is sitting in a rocking chair remembering the time she kept watch over her mama at the "coolin' board". A white sheet is draped across two wooden crates.

CORINNA: (singing)

SIT DOWN SERVANT SIT DOWN
SIT DOWN SERVANT SIT DOWN
SIT DOWN AND REST A LITTLE WHILE
I KNOW YOU'RE TIRED SIT DOWN

I can see her face just as if it was that day. When I close my eyes there's no trouble bringin' her into focus. Wake up, wake up I was screamin' at her. I figured she'd just gone to sleep cause she'd do that a lot of the time. But she never moved. It's been thirty-three years.

An ethereal lighting reveals Hattie on another front porch picking the guitar. A baby is cradled up next to her.

My first memory of mama was her sitting up there on that porch, singin' and pickin' the guitar.

HATTIE: (Singing and playing)

WHEN YOUR FEETS GET SO TIRED AND
YOU AIN'T GOT NO TIME TO REST
YEAH YOUR FEETS GET SO TIRED AND
YOU AIN'T GOT NO TIME TO REST
YOU CAN'T BE HUNTING ROUND FO'
THE ONE YOU LOVE THE BEST

HEY...HEY...HEY...OOOOUUUEEE
HEY...HEY...HEY...OOOOUUUEEE

Hattie continues moaning in background.

CORINNA: They say she was a very sad child until her brother John brought home a guitar for her. She never put it down. It all began back 'round 1909.

Music out.

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MAKE IT THRU THE NIGHT
Chic was sitting in his studio when a friend came by with 110 (8x10), black and white glossy photographs of abused and battered women. She was putting the finishing touches on the video for the local rape crisis center and wondered if Chic could compose the music. He couldn't have been more honored. She left the photos with Chic who taped all 110 of them to his studio wall. He sat with them for a whole week before ever touching the guitar. He wanted to come up with the right feeling. That feeling turned out to be that of a mother sitting rocking her children in her arms and telling them 'everything was gonna be all right'. This song later became the title cut for Chic's second album.

PEACE CHILD
The song "Peace In The Heart" was composed by Chic in the mid-eighties for the Great Peace March that began in Los Angeles and ended up in Washington, D.C. The official march actually never made it past Denver, but several hundred marchers persevered and made it all the way. Chic's song "Peace In The Heart" was later picked up and incorporated into the International play, Peace Child, touring with the company to Russia and Poland. Peace In The Heart is written in seven languages and has been recorded and used by Disney Magazines in cooperation with UNESCO for the "Children's Summit On The Environment" in 1995 and the "Children's Summit On Society" in 1997.

SOUNDING THE RIVER
Chic was the Music Arranger and Director in the year 2001 for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of Sounding The River--Huck Finn revisited, written and directed by Edward Morgan.

POLK COUNTY
Zora Neale Hurston is most famous for her play Mulebone which she wrote in collaboration with Langston Hughes in 1930. They had disputes over the ownership of the play, and Mulebone was never produced. Polk County was discovered in a cache of unpublished Hurston works at the Library of Congress in 1944. It had never been produced. The manuscript came to the attention of the Arena Stage and was produced in 2002. It was further revised for the McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ and they brought in Chic Street Man as the new Arranger, Composer and Music Director.

“Chic Street Man’s musical direction creates such a rich atmosphere, so full of violence and danger, life and love, that the show is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. His ten original songs, along with such traditional numbers as John Henry, Careless Love, Polk County Blues, Ask The Watchman How Long, and many others, infuse Polk County with high spirits and energy that never flags.”
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Additional Compositions:

LIGHTER THAN AIR
YOU'VE GOT THE POWER
BLACK MONDAY'S CHILDREN
STYMIE -- The Life Of A Little Rascal
INSIDE STRAIGHT -- KCET TV
LA ROSSETTE ARROSSEE, French animated film

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A PARTIAL LIST OF CHIC'S VOCAL COMPOSITIONS:

ODE TO MAFEEN
RAG MAN
PEACE IN THE HEART
AIN'T NOBODY'S BUSINESS BUT MY OWN
SHE MOVES
HYPOCRITICAL WOMAN
I JUST FEEL LIKE SINGIN' THE BLUES
BORN IN THE BLUES
LAZY AFTERNOON
DOG AND THE KITTY
THE GAP
THE FLOW
ARE YOU GONNA MISS ME
SLOW DOWN
LOSIN' YOU
WHAT TIME IS IT
LEFT FOOT DOWN
RHYTHM HIGH RHYTHM LOW
MONKEY'S REVOLUTION
MAKE IT THRU THE NIGHT
WAY DOWN SOUTH
MASTER PLAN
GUNS AWAY
CELINA
GLADYS
HEY BABY
ONE LOVE WOMAN
BE YOU NOT A LADY
THE MOON IS RISIN'
GIVE IT BACK
SOLACE
FOLLOW ME
EVERYBODY BE YOSELF
MR. BOOGIE
GIVE A LITTLE LOVE
LISTEN TO YOUR FEELINGS
ORDINARY MAN
BEAU-TI-FUL
SAM BA KU LE
LOSE IT
MISTREATIN' YOU
COME A LITTLE CLOSER
MOTHER EARTH
DO YOU WANT TO MAKE UP
KNOW SOMETHIN' 'BOUT YO BABY
MYSTERY
DON'T SHUT ME OUT
GOODNIGHT BABY
DIDDY WADDY
PASSIN' THE BLUES ALONG
YOUR EYES
SNOOZIN'
YOU DO SO WELL FOR MY SOUL
YOU TOUCH ME
I'LL BE HERE
I CAN'T GO HOME
GOOD INTENTIONS
BORN IN THE BLUES
MOVIN' UP
DON'T SHUT ME OUT
ASHAME ASHAME
HEY LADY
AIMIN' SO HIGH
WALKING IN THE RAIN
HEY GIRL
JESSICA
LOVIN YOU
GIVE IT BACK BABY

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