A Chicago Tribune Book of 2019, Notable Chicago Reads
A Booklist Top 10 Arts Book of 2019
A No Depression Top Music Book of 2019
Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago's place in the
history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in
its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s was more than just a series of
hits: it was a marker and a source of black empowerment. In Move On
Up, Aaron Cohen tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul
music in Chicago. Together, soul music and black-owned businesses
thrived. Record producers and song-writers broadcast optimism for black
America's future through their sophisticated, jazz-inspired productions
for the Dells and many others. Curtis Mayfield boldly sang of uplift
with unmistakable grooves like "We're a Winner" and "I Plan to Stay a
Believer." Musicians like Phil Cohran and the Pharaohs used their music
to voice Afrocentric philosophies that challenged racism and
segregation, while Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire and Chaka Khan
created music that inspired black consciousness. Soul music also
accompanied the rise of African American advertisers and the campaign of
Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983. This
empowerment was set in stark relief by the social unrest roiling in
Chicago and across the nation: as Chicago's homegrown record labels
produced rising stars singing songs of progress and freedom, Chicago's
black middle class faced limited economic opportunities and deep-seated
segregation, all against a backdrop of nationwide deindustrialization.
Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and a music critic's passion
for the unmistakable Chicago soul sound, Cohen shows us how soul music
became the voice of inspiration and change for a city in turmoil.
