Freelance writer, editor and OffBeat contributor Roger Hahn has died. He was 72.

Besides OffBeat Magazine, Hahn has been featured in NPR Jazz Online, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Songlines, American Songwriter, Country Roads, Rhythms Magazine and many other publications. His writing spans many genres with the most persistent theme in his work being the power and appeal of music.

Roger Hahn was born in New York but lived all over the US. He studied and worked in New York, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, California, and Missouri before falling in love with Southern culture and settling in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, he used his skills as a writer and photographer to help organizations apply for post-disaster grants and documented how the grants helped recovery efforts. Hahn received a BA from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and MFA from Washington University in Saint Louis.

In 2016 Pelican Publishing published Hahn’s book The Sounds of Louisiana: The Twenty Essential Music Makers. Hahn wrote: “Here in Louisiana, we make music. When I say we make music, I mean that we don’t just play music—we invent it, too. We take the raw materials of music—of sound—and make something new with it.”

Hahn was a steady and reliable contributor to OffBeat Magazine. His writings displayed unique insights to the music and culture of Louisiana. His 2012 article on Preservation Hall and his interview with Ben Jaffe revealed the following: “When I was growing up, I experienced New Orleans music as a living, breathing organism. The more I recognized Preservation Hall’s role in keeping New Orleans’ music traditions alive, the more I realized the way those traditions were being represented would have to change. And the audience would have to change. When I joined the Preservation Hall band, it was rare that you’d find anyone in our audience under 60 years old. It was a very mature audience.”

Hahn always said he was in love (literally) with Maria Muldaur and wrote about her many times. Hahn had met Muldaur in New York in the ’60s and her presence in his life never faltered. Hahn said of Muldaur “Maria Muldaur intuitively knows what a song needs to suit her vocal style.” In 2012 Muldaur recorded …First Came Memphis Minnie a tribute to the artist, which set Hahn on a critical reevaluation of her work, that resulted in the 2014 discussion of Minnie.

For OffBeat’s series “Masters of Louisiana Music,” Hahn contributed an article on Huddie William “Leadbelly” Ledbetter quoting Pete Seeger’s words on Leadbelly: “He bequeathed us a couple hundred of the best songs we will ever know… The most important thing I learned from him was his straightforward approach, his direct honesty. I wish people would stop trying to imitate his accent or his guitar style and learn instead from his subtle simplicity and his powerful pride.”

In Hahn’s OffBeat review of Irma Thomas’ My Heart’s in Memphis: Irma Thomas Sings the Songs of Dan Penn he said: “You could say that Irma Thomas remains absolutely true to the path she chose early in life, exploring exactly what her feelings—her heart and her soul—tell her she should be exploring. While it may be true that it never has been easy being Irma Thomas, it’s also true, as New Orleans’ own Soul Queen frequently insists, it has almost always been a good thing—you might even call it a blessing—to be Irma Thomas.”

For OffBeat, Roger Hahn wrote and interviewed many artists including Tom McDermott (“Here are classical-quality chops deployed with gently swaying rhythms taking on a newly discovered repertoire.”); Nicholas Payton (“Payton tries to make sure the next generation is taken care of. Wherever he goes, he tells me as we are leaving, he brings the band into schools, high schools, elementary schools, colleges.”); Quoting Cyril Neville about Mahalia Jackson (“Here in New Orleans, home to the greatest gospel singer who ever walked this earth, Mahalia Jackson, you can’t find a plaque mentioning that fact, nowhere.”); Henry Butler (“His signature style establish him securely as the latest in a long line of New Orleans piano ‘professors’ stretching back at least to Jelly Roll Morton.”); Harold Battiste (“I got the idea of starting AFO from my feeling that the black community didn’t own anything. Instead of buying land and starting a separate state, I said, ‘We’ll get some music. We create a lot of the music, and we don’t own any of it.’”); and many more. Hahn’s writing for OffBeat can be found here.

Like most music journalists, Hahn developed close relationships with his subjects. Among his close friends were pianist and composer Tom McDermott, pianist and composer Esben Just; photographer Greg Miles, trumpeter James Andrews and of course, Maria Muldaur.

Although Hahn is gone, his writings will live forever to honor local musicians and to compel musical discoveries.