SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 ISSUE
Honoring the Working People
Mountain Home Labor Day Salute Features Organizer, Musician Si Kahn Sunday
Long-time civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician Si Kahn will perform as part of Mountain Home Music’s Labor Day Salute this Sunday, September 5, at First Baptist Church in Boone.“Most music that’s written today is not about working people,” said Si Kahn. “It doesn’t pay the proper tribute.”
For 45 years, Kahn has dedicated his life to the working class as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. His career began in 1965 in Arkansas, where he worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the student arm of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. In the ‘70s, he worked alongside mine workers in Harlan County, Ky., and as an area director for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
Kahn’s extensive musical catalog includes 15 albums of original songs for adults and children and a collection of traditional labor, civil rights and women’s songs recorded with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp. His songs have been recorded by more than 100 artists and translated into half a dozen languages. His most recent recording, Courage, released in May 2010, is a tribute to the quiet heroism of everyday people.
Kahn is a fitting addition to Mountain Home Music’s annual Labor Day Salute, taking place this Sunday, September 5, at First Baptist Church in Boone. The 8:00 p.m. show is $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Student tickets are $10, kids 6 to 12 are admitted for $5 and kids 5 and under are admitted free.
The concert also features host Joe Shannon, David Johnson, Steve Lewis, Scott Freeman, Josh Scott and Paige Greene. Through story and song, Mountain Home Music will honor millworkers, railroaders, farmers, coal miners and many others.
Now based in Charlotte, Kahn owned a one-room log cabin off the Blue Ridge Parkway in northwestern North Carolina for almost 30 years.
“I spent a lot of time hiding out there,” he said. “I do consider that part of the country also my home.”
Kahn, a regular performer at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, grew up in a musical household. His first grade teacher proudly reported on his report card that he had written a song, which was being taught to his entire class.
For the first 20 years of his musical career, Kahn had no trouble finding fodder for his song lyrics. He wrote about his own experiences and memories. But he reached a point where he had said just about everything he wanted to say about himself and his family.
“I started looking for other ways to find songs,” he said. One venue was musical theatre. “The other is that people ask me to come write songs.”
People familiar with Kahn’s work frequently ask him to put their stories to music. Next week, Kahn is traveling to Alaska at the request of a salmon fisherman who wants Kahn to write about a company’s plan to build a large gold mine there, which will destroy the local fishery.
“That’s where I become a musical journalist,” Kahn said. “If I were interviewing you, it wouldn’t be a newspaper article; it would be a song.”
The challenges facing working people are as pressing, if not worse, than when Kahn began his work in the ‘60s, he noted.
“This is a miserable time for working people right now,” he said. “Folks are unemployed by the droves. All the people that still want to put in a hard week’s work don’t have the option. We don’t have a national policy that says people are entitled to work and make a living, and that’s wrong.”
But Kahn’s music isn’t just about issues of politics and power, Kahn said. “Working people have got a lot of strength and courage. They have built communities and institutions and have created some of the great music.
“Every working family’s got stories of courage, of loss, of risk, of adventure,” Kahn continued. “It’s a culture I’m trying to recreate.
“Taken collectively, it’s a picture of Southern working life,” Kahn said about his body of work. “I want people to be proud of who they are.”
Kahn said he “was honored to be asked” to be part of Mountain Home Music’s Labor Day Salute.
“I’m really proud that Joe Shannon and Mountain Home Music stop for an evening to honor what working people have done,” he said.
Tickets for Mountain Home Music concerts can be purchased online by clicking to www.mountainhomemusic.com or at the Mast General Stores (Boone and Valle Crucis), Rydell Music Center (Boone), Fred’s Mercantile (Beech Mountain) and at Pandora’s Mailbox and the Dulcimer Shop (Blowing Rock). Tickets at the door must be paid in cash or by check.
Mountain Home Music is affiliated with the Blue Ridge Music Trails, a project of the North Carolina Arts Council. For more information, click to www.mountainhomemusic.com or call 828-964-3392.
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