Si Kahn

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #133 (December 2007/January 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Si Kahn

Passing Along Stories

by Steve Winick

Singer, songwriter, and labor activist Si Kahn released his first retrospective album, In My Heart, in 1994. Now it's 13 years later, and Kahn's second retrospective album, Thanksgiving, is available. Like In My Heart, Thanksgiving was recorded live in the Netherlands. This time Kahn worked with the Dutch singing duo Ygdrassil, who provided what Dirty Linen reviewer Lahri Bond called "beautiful, clear harmonies."

Thanksgiving presents new versions of 20 Si Kahn classics, plus four new songs. Given such a large back catalog (Kahn estimates he's written over a thousand songs, of which he's recorded 170), how did he select the material for Thanksgiving? To begin with, he concentrated on songs "that seemed to be taking on a life of their own, meaning that other artists were performing and recording them," he said in an email interview in August. "They had choruses that invited harmonies from Ygdrassil. And they represented the main issues I've explored in my songs." He also followed two rules: first, he included two songs from each of his 10 original albums, and second, he excluded any that appeared on In My Heart. The result, he said, is that "taken as a whole, the CD is representative of the things I write about, as well as the styles in which I write and perform."

It's been 33 years since the first of the Thanksgiving songs was released, but Kahn has still maintained his sense of fun. He attributes this partly to a late start in the professional music world, partly to his choice to remain only a semi-professional musician. "By the time I got on stage at Alice Tully Hall, I was already 35 years old. I had three children and work that I loved (I've been a civil rights, labor, and community organizer, primarily in the South, for over 42 years now), which included a regular paycheck and health insurance. I wish everyone had those things, and I sure am grateful that I've got them myself. So I kept my day job and just played music occasionally -- and that's what's kept me going all these years. That's kept it fresh for me."

If the professional part came late in life, the songwriting sure didn't. Some years ago, while rooting through old papers in his father's house, Kahn discovered his first report card, which he received at the age of six. In the "comments" section, the teacher had written, "Simon has written a little song, and we are teaching it to the class. I hope to encourage him in this activity." Kahn's music began at home, where his mother was an amateur pianist and his father a rabbi and cantor. His love of traditional folk music came a little later, when his 11th-grade teacher assigned a research project at the Library of Congress. "While wandering down the halls," he remembered, "I stumbled across a sign that said 'Archive of Folk Song.' "

[cover #133]