Lauren Onkey
Lauren Onkey is the Senior Director of NPR Music in Washington, DC. In this role, she leads NPR Music's team of journalists, critics, video, and podcast makers, and works with NPR's newsroom and robust Member station network to expand the impact of NPR Music and continue positioning public radio as an essential force in music.
Prior to joining NPR, she was the inaugural Dean and Chair of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, where she created a program that provided civic engagement opportunities for students. She served as Vice President of Education and Public Programming at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum from 2008-2015, developing and managing the museum's award-winning education and community programs. She was the executive producer of the museum's Annual Music Masters series and oversaw the Rock Hall's Library and Archives.
Onkey spent fourteen years teaching literature and cultural studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, specializing in postcolonial literature and popular music studies. She is the author of Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity: Celtic Soul Brothers (Routledge 2009), an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between Irish and African-American heritage. Over the course of her career she has published many articles in literary studies, popular music studies, women's studies, and pedagogy. Onkey holds doctoral and master's degrees in English from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor's degree in English and Government from the College of William & Mary.
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Dylan's first album of original songs in eight years comes out June 19. Hear the bluesy "False Prophet" now. -
For our series One-Hit Wonders/Second-Best Songs, NPR Music Senior Director Lauren Onkey recommends "Out of Left Field" by Percy Sledge. He's known mostly for his 1966 hit, "When a Man Loves a Woman." -
Art Neville's life connected directly to rock and roll's first notes. Travel through his funky catalog with The Meters, The Neville Brothers and his own solo songs. -
Charles laid claim to the center of American popular music on these 1962 classics, and ended up with some of the brashest and best-selling music of his career. -
Springsteen has performed his one-man show over 230 times since its debut last year. But, just as the Boss bids adieu to Broadway, a new film documenting the show is set to premiere on Netflix. -
We've cooked up the perfect playlist to get the gratitude flowing this Thanksgiving. -
Deluxe reissues of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and The Beatles' self-titled "White Album" celebrate their 50th anniversaries, and reveal the remarkable creative abandon behind them. -
Even stripped down to a guitar and voice, the song is classic Springsteen: grand, optimistic, spiritual and open-ended enough to be embraced by a big audience. -
In this career-spanning conversation, we trace Aretha Franklin's journey, from her earliest days singing gospel in her father's church to becoming one of the most influential artists of all time. -
It's clear why Franklin was the undisputed Queen of Soul. Enjoy a playlist of the singer's biggest hits in a career that spanned decades and defied genre rules.
