I know a woman whose fifteen-year-old son recently died from lymphoma. He was in and out of hospitals for the past year or so, and he was in a lot of pain in the days before he finally passed. None of it was pretty, and none of it was fair. The day before the wake, my heart heavy with the contemplation of the suffering of innocents, I went to the Hideout in Chicago to hear Mavis Staples sing.

“We want to bring you some joy, happiness, inspiration, and positive vibrations,” she announced after the first song. “Enough maybe to last you the next six months.”

I started crying soon thereafter and almost couldn’t stop.

I know of Ms. Staples essentially by reputation alone, save maybe a gospel tune here or an “I’ll Take You There” there. So, unfreighted by any significant personal associations or expectations, I stood in her presence that night, as she was recording a soon-to-be-released live album, with a quiet curiosity as to why I should find myself at that specific place and time when I had so much else on my mind. And I heard my answer not so much in just her voice as I heard it in the incredible amount of history enriching it. Not just musical history—though there was plenty of that there too, with references to her pals in the Band and the like—but straight-up history history.

She spoke with a gentle reverence about the times she attended Dr. King’s church and how that spurred her father, Pops Staples, to write some of the most beloved songs associated with the civil rights movement. And as the full weight of her reminiscences began to hit me, I felt so much more than starstruck or (heaven forbid) that I’d just been namedropped on. I was reminded of the very real power of music to move people in profound ways, to change their lives and provide a balm for very real wounds, and to occasionally contribute to significant work toward a greater good.

Though I am a sincere and enthusiastic consumer of music and attendee of concerts in general, it’s all too easy for me to slip into unwarranted hyperbole time and time again after catching up with the latest batch of sexy young guns to have emerged fresh-faced and eager from their basement practice spaces into the dark of their first cross-country small club tours. Which is not to malign the young guns, who do bring me much genuine pleasure, but to make proper obeisance to enduring professionalism, stature, and grace when I encounter it. A concert like this is not just another concert—it means something to hear Ms. Staples talk about family and inspiration and racism and The Struggle. There’s potency in between-song banter that, instead of bristling with nervous energy or meandering through some random truck-stop anecdote, touches on major issues in a tone of such casual authority. It is a reminder that history is still with us, and a promise that anything can be lived through. It is a guarantee that one is always and inextricably linked to the larger griefs of one’s own era, and an embrace of the responsibility to go forth and continue to tell the tale as long as it’s relevant. (It’s always relevant.)

Not only does she bring all these extra-musical signifiers to converge on the moment, but Ms. Staples can also put on one hell of a show. Her voice rises up like the Chicago skyline—full of steel and majesty and sharp edges that let the stars know she has their number. She’s also assembled an ace band possessed of coolly controlled good taste. Her guitarist plays with a tone that could get a person drunk, the rhythm section seems like the sunset—like something that’s always been there and always shows up, no matter the timing or the season—and her backing singers serve her and the material impeccably with generous, full-throated support.

It’s perhaps facile to say, but music can make life so much less lonely. The loneliness I felt in my impotent sympathy for my friend’s family’s loss—my inability to truly know their pain, my powerlessness to do anything meaningful to help alleviate their sorrow—may be utterly trivial in relation to the pernicious social evils that Ms. Staples lived through in the 1960s and surely still continues to live through to some degree today, none of which is pretty, and none of which is fair. But to be touched by the enormity of her talent on that night at least brought my private sadness out into public, where it could dance in the midst of a group of people who were assuredly also feeling the love, regardless of the woes in their own hearts.