“Heart of Chicago Soul Club is a group of women who are obsessed with collecting vinyl with rare northern soul music from the 1960s-70s. Soul music has a popular subculture internationally, particularly in the United Kingdom, and its fans are called soulies. We’re mainly a bunch of old souls collecting old soul music that has a lot of heart,” Benjamin-Koller said. “We have a very supportive friendship with soulies in other cities, which we call our sister cities, where we promote each other’s events and help people get involved with rare soul music.”

From the late 1950s until the mid-1970s, Chicago was home to Record Row, a 10-block stretch of South Michigan Avenue where several independent record companies produced blues, R&B, jazz and soul music, according to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. –Kayleigh Padar, Block Club Chicago