Aaron Cohen

Aaron Cohen teaches humanities at City Colleges of Chicago and writes for numerous publications, including the Chicago Tribune, DownBeat and Chicago Reader. He is the author of “Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power” (University of Chicago Press), which looks at the social and musical changes that shaped R&B in his hometown during the 1960s and 1970s. His first book, “Amazing Grace” (Bloomsbury), analyzes Aretha Franklin’s soul-gospel album. Cohen has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and is a two-time recipient of the Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Stories

Story

Toasting with The Upsetter

When Lee “Scratch” Perry appeared at the Concorde 2 venue in Brighton in February 2002, the British audience had undoubtedly never seen anybody like him. But much of the music they’d heard would not have sounded the same without him.

Story

The People’s Queen

When Aretha Franklin came onstage in Stockholm in the spring of 1968, her soulful coronation was already achieved. One year earlier, she began her half-decade run of massively successful albums and within a few months, would appear on the cover of Time. European concert-hall audiences responded to her with the same fervor as legions of fans across America.