Move on Up

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.

"Move On Up is an extraordinary achievement, packed with deep research and vivid writing, with a backbeat so strong it thumps from every page. Cohen has written the definitive account of an important slice of American popular culture. Cue up the Chi-Lites, open this book, and enjoy!"--Jonathan Eig, author of "Ali: A Life", "Among DJs, hip-hop producers, record collectors, and other aficionados, Charles Stepney's work has come to exemplify Black Chicago's monumental contribution to American musical culture in the 1960s and 1970s: its mix of commercialism, tradition, and Afrofuturism. . . . Cohen expertly documents that contribution in Move On Up."-- "New York Review of Books", "Many of the ten best arts books reviewed in Booklist over the past year reclaim or more fully appreciate artists whose legacies have been neglected or minimized due to their gender, sexual orientation, or race, while other titles offer new perspectives on icon figures and music itself. . . . Some of the biggest names in African American music populate Cohen's vivid history of soul music in Chicago as he traces its evolution and profound and far-reaching social and artistic impact." --Donna Seaman "Booklist, "Top 10 Arts Books: 2019"" (10/15/2019 12:00:00 AM), "With a journalist's clarity, a scholar's curiosity, and a local's passion, the incomparable Aaron Cohen affirms why Chicago has always been more than its challenges. Move On Up shows how big-shouldered grit, astonishing talent, and entrepreneurial savvy combined to make 'the Chi' a powerhouse center for music and activism back in the days when the world discovered that black was, indeed, beautiful."--Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., University of Pennsylvania, author of "Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop" and "The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop", "The subject of Move on Up, Aaron Cohen insists in the first few pages, is Chicago soul music as a vector of social change. . . . Move on Upis less concerned with labels, venues, and fan behavior than it is with the shaping influence of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s strategic move into Chicago in 1966, or Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton's speech at the Affro-Arts Theater in the late 1960s. Cohen's most valuable contribution here is to demonstrate that the 'Black Cultural Power' of his subtitle was forged as a web of political, cultural, and social engagements."-- "Journal of Popular Music Studies"

Aaron Cohen covers the arts for numerous publications and teaches English, journalism, and humanities at City Colleges of Chicago. He is the author of Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace.