Leonard Cohen

 Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
 Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (21 September 1934). He learned to play guitar while he was in his teens and quickly joined a band called the Buckskin Boys. His mother, of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, emigrated from Lithuania while his great-grandfather emigrated from Poland. He grew up in Westmount on the Island of Montreal. His father, Nathan Cohen, who owned a substantial Montreal clothing store, died when Cohen was nine years old. On the topic of being a Kohen, Cohen has said that, "I had a very Messianic childhood." He told Richard Goldstein in 1967. "
I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest." Cohen attended Herzliah High School, where he studied with poet Irving Layton. As a teenager, he learned to play the guitar, and formed a country-folk group called the Buckskin Boys. His father's will provided him with a modest trust income, sufficient to allow him to pursue his literary ambitions, without having to worry about where his rent would come from.

He attended McGill University and, while enrolled there, published his first collection of poetry in 1956. It was his second collection, however, in 1961, The Spice-Box of Earth, which catapulted Cohen to some notoriety among poets in Canada. Soon after, he relocated to Greece and continued to spend the rest of the decade writing fiction and poetry there.

By the end of the 1960s, he'd moved to the U.S. to pursue a career as a folksinger. Artists like Judy Collins achieved considerable success with his songs and he eventually signed with Columbia Records. Throughout the 1970s, Cohen rose to cult status with his dark, explicit songs about relationships and sexuality. His experimental approach to contemporary folk music, utilizing world elements and electronic instruments, quickly became hugely influential among other singer-songwriters.

In the 1990s, he moved to the Mount Baldy Zen Center in Los Angeles, where he lived for five years. He was ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk in 1996 and took on the name Jikan, before leaving the Zen Center in 1999. He released a new album in 2001, and continues to make music. He has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Currently Cohen is recording a new studio album with his touring band and his producer Ed Sanders.The album is expected in 2011 and is supposed to feature four songs performed during the 2009 and 2010 shows, "The Darkness", "Lullaby", "Born in Chains" , and "Feels So Good", and also "Amen" and "The Street", some of them co-written (and co-produced) with Sharon Robinson and also with Anjani Thomas.At least one more song has been tried out at the daily soundchecks ("My Oh My"). The first new songs were presented back in 2006, on KCRW radio, where Cohen played two demo tracks, "Book of Longing" and "Puppets".