Chaka Through the Fire Review

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(More customer reviews)It's been thirty years since Chaka Khan was introduced to the music world through the band Rufus. While Khan's tenure with Rufus and subsequent solo career have made her one of the most influential and celebrated artists in popular music (the accolades include seven Grammies), her private life has not been well documented. Thus, this long rumored-to-be-in-the- making autobiography has been highly anticipated by Khan's throng of admirers. If only she had been able to fully recount her incredible journey.
In the opening chapters of Chaka! Through The Fire, Khan is quite forthcoming in discussing her humble beginnings in Chicago's Hyde Park. By the age of ten, she had endured her parents' turbulent marriage and divorce, followed by her father's desertion (leaving Khan and her younger siblings to be raised by her mother, aunt, and grandmother). During adolescence, she entered - and won - many talent contests as a member of the Crystalettes, performed with the Shades Of Black vocal group, and even found time to join the Black Panther Party. Then a teenage pregnancy threatened to stifle her musical dreams, just as Khan's own unplanned birth had halted her mother's artistic aspirations.
Fortunately, Khan continued to pursue a career in music, and the book perks up when she becomes the lead singer of the inter-racial band Ask Rufus in 1972. Khan takes us through the band's relocation from Chicago to Los Angeles, the shortening of their name to Rufus, their failed first album, and onto their breakthrough collaboration with Stevie Wonder on the hit "Tell Me Something Good" (of which Wonder failed to give the naive Khan a deserved co-writing credit). As fame beckoned, Khan recalls the band's abrupt rebilling by their record label to "Rufus featuring Chaka Khan," creating a rift between her and the rest of the band that would continue to grow until she left the group in 1983.
Rufus' hectic itinerary - frequent recordings sessions surrounded by constant touring - drastically altered Khan's life, as she began to take drugs to keep up with the demands. Her escalating drug use also profoundly affected the quality of this book, as the vivid details of Khan's youth give way to vague remembrances of stardom from the late '70s through late '90s. Latter-day Rufus efforts and seminal early solo recordings, for instance, are dismissed by Khan with just a few sentences devoted to each (the only project given adequate commentary is Khan's teaming with Prince on the poorly promoted 1998 album Come To My House). Meanwhile, marriages and romantic relationships - all of which involve substance abuse on both parties' part - go sour, with little or no explanation given.
The book's final chapters depict Khan - at 50 - at peace with herself, a doting grandmother who has been drug-free for over three years (thanks to an intense detox program). Her vocal strength is still considerable and continues to be lauded (her most recent Grammy being bestowed upon her just last February). She has also started her own foundation that "aids and assists woman and children at risk." It's an inspiring - if improbable - rebirth by a remarkable woman.
Chaka! Through The Fire saves the best for last with a discography in the Appendix that contains a listing of all Rufus and solo albums' tracks, as well as Khan's contributions to others artists' albums and side projects like soundtracks and tribute albums. Khan's extraordinary contralto has been sought for dozens of these special projects over the years and this thorough compilation of credits alone merits the cost of the book for Chakaholics.

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