{"id":25113,"date":"2017-07-07T03:54:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T10:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=25113"},"modified":"2017-07-05T22:06:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T05:06:51","slug":"an-out-of-hand-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/07\/07\/an-out-of-hand-hobby\/","title":{"rendered":"An out-of-hand hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Si Kahn plays at the folk festival, which runs July 13-16. (photo from sikahn.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

While Charlotte, N.C.-based folk musician Si Kahn \u2013 who\u2019s coming to play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next week \u2013 may have called the United States home for most of his 73 years, he spent about 12 of his first 16 months of life in Canada. His father, Rabbi Benjamin Kahn, was sent to Montreal by B\u2019nai B\u2019rith in 1944 to help set up the Hillel Foundation at McGill University, which he did for just over a year before being called back to Pennsylvania State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to say that I don\u2019t have a single negative memory of my time in Montreal,\u201d said Kahn, whose father eventually became the international director of B\u2019nai B\u2019rith Hillel Foundation (1959-1971).<\/p>\n

And Kahn\u2019s Canada cred goes back further.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter my paternal grandfather, Gabriel Kahn, deserted the czar\u2019s army and walked across Europe, he was a pick-and-shovel labourer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, helping build the \u2018northern spur\u2019 through the [Canadian] Shield towards Timmins,\u201d Kahn told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cHe was also a hod carrier in Winnipeg, helping build the Royal Alexandra Hotel, carrying 100 pounds of bricks or mortar up 10 or more storeys on his shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kahn tells his grandfather\u2019s story \u2013 and that of many other members of his family \u2013 in the musical Hope<\/em>. The song \u201cCrossing the Border\u201d highlights the border-crossings of his grandfather\u2019s journey from Russia: \u201cHe got passage to Nova Scotia \/ Got married in Manitoba … Then he moved down south of the border \/ By the mills on the Merrimack River \/ He pumped gas and kept store for a living \/ Raised up his daughter and sons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabriel and his wife, Celia, settled in Lowell, Mass., said Kahn, who wrote about his Jewish roots and their influence on his music in an article called \u201cThe Chords that Bind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was growing up \u2026 our family sang together,\u201d he writes. \u201cOn the Sabbath and on holidays, we would stay at the dinner table long after the food and dishes had been cleared, and we would sing. Because musical instruments were not allowed on the Sabbath, we sang without instrumentation \u2013 but not without accompaniment.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his paternal grandfather, he learned \u201cthe fine points of creating a rhythm section, using only two basic variations (closed fist and open palm) of the basic hand-on-table technique.\u201d From his parents, he and his sister, Jenette \u2013 whose career in the comic book industry included being president of DC Comics for more than 20 years \u2013 learned \u201cthe rudiments of high and low harmony, made up as you go along.\u201d<\/p>\n

The songs they sang were mostly prayers. \u201cWe sang a little bit in Yiddish, too, folk and story songs from the Old Country, which in this case meant almost any place in Europe,\u201d he notes. And, despite his not understanding most of what he was singing, he did understand \u201cwhat the songs really meant to us as Jews, as a family, as people in the world. They were our bond, our unity, our affirmation, our courage. They were our way of claiming our rhythmic and harmonic relation with each other and with our community. Our songs reinforced our solidarity, our sense that we could overcome the obstacles in our path.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for when his musical career began, Kahn told the Independent<\/em>, \u201cYou might say I \u2018turned professional\u2019 in 1974. I had just turned 30 years old a few months before I recorded my first album, an LP titled New Wood<\/em>, which was released in 1975 on June Appal Records.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my first paid public performances was in 1979 \u2026 at the second-ever Vancouver Folk Music Festival. I\u2019d led traditional labour and civil rights songs at rallies and demonstrations and on picket lines, but Vancouver was one of the first times I played my own original songs in public.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I do consider myself a professional musician, and while I\u2019m a longtime member of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), music has always been a very part-time vocation for me. My lifetime identity and work since I was 21 years old has been as a civil rights, labour and community organizer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI once told a reporter that my music is \u2018a hobby that got out of hand.\u2019 That\u2019s really an accurate description. I typically do no more than three festivals and a dozen concerts each year at most. Most of my appearances are benefits for progressive nonprofits,\u201d he said, adding that he\u2019d be performing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival house-party fundraiser on July 12.<\/p>\n

Kahn heads to Orillia, Ont., for a July 7 performance at the Mariposa Folk Festival. From there, he\u2019ll come to Vancouver for the folk festival, but also \u201cto do some organizing work for Musicians United to Protect Bristol Bay.\u201d It\u2019s a cause he\u2019s been helping on a volunteer basis since 2010 \u2013 the campaign\u2019s goal is \u201cto stop the Pebble Mine, and to protect permanently Alaska\u2019s Bristol Bay, a cultural and environmental treasure, and one of the world\u2019s last remaining great wild salmon fisheries.\u201d He has donated all of the income from his 18th CD, called Bristol Bay<\/em>, to the musicians\u2019 group.<\/p>\n

About combining music with activism, Kahn said, \u201cThe defining moment for me came when I was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta in the summer of 1965, when I was 21 years old, during the Southern Civil Rights Movement, which was very much a singing movement. That was when I first began to understand the usefulness of music in movements for social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among Kahn\u2019s many achievements in the social justice arena was being, in the early 1980s, an initial organizer and the founding national board chair for the Jewish Fund for Justice, the predecessor to Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He has written three books on community organizing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see myself as an organizer, which I consider a specific type of activism, rather than as an activist,\u201d he explained. \u201cOrganizers work to bring people together so that they can use the power of numbers to counter the power of money, authority and\/or force.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any organizing campaign, in any campaign for justice, there will be competing sets of \u2018facts.\u2019 Whether our facts are more accurate\/truthful than their facts isn\u2019t nearly as important as whether, through organizing, we can build enough collective power to persuade those who have the ability to make the change, or changes, we\u2019re asking for to meet our demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the topic of truth, Kahn said, \u201cFor me, there\u2019s a difference between accuracy and truthfulness. Take, for example, the story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Is that story accurate in the literal sense? But it should be told and retold truthfully, meaning that it\u2019s our responsibility to transmit the story as it was told to us, whether verbally or in written form.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy question is whether, in the real world, it\u2019s even possible to differentiate,\u201d he said. \u201cIf someone believes something passionately, it\u2019s more than likely that no amount of either \u2018facts\u2019 or \u2018alternative facts\u2019 is going to persuade them to change their mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cMinds are more likely to be changed by experience. One of an organizer\u2019s roles is to help the people she\/he is working with have experiences through which they achieve a sense of possibility, that the world might be different for them and for others like them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is also one of the places where storytelling can be useful. Years ago, I was in an audience listening to former U.S. senator Paul Simon. I don\u2019t recall the specifics but, at one point, he was challenged on his support for legislation concerned with disability rights. He could have answered with facts\/statistics (or, for that matter, with \u2018alternative facts\u2019). Instead, he said, \u2018Let me tell you about a young man I know,\u2019 and proceeded from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the musical Hope<\/em>, there is a song called \u201cDreamers,\u201d the chorus of which calls for us to \u201chonour the dreamers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI consider myself a \u2018practical radical,\u2019 someone who helps people work towards what at least appear \u2013 based on careful analysis and strategic thinking \u2013 to be achievable goals,\u201d said Kahn. \u201cIf that\u2019s being a dreamer, dayenu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many things I\u2019d like to see in this world we share that I just don\u2019t see as possible. I may be wrong in that judgment. But, if I\u2019m going to help people organize themselves in order to achieve a goal they share, I need to believe there\u2019s at least one and hopefully several practical paths to achieving that goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018dreamers\u2019 I honour are those who not only have a dream, but who do everything they can to make it real.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Vancouver Folk Music Festival\u2019s 25th anniversary, Kahn wrote the song \u201cFor Canada,\u201d which recalls the Underground Railway, the slaves making their dangerous way here: \u201cWhen all hope was failing, think what strength it gave \/ To dream about a country that no longer held a slave\u2026.\u201d A country to which, \u201c\u2026 my own father\u2019s father came with willing hands \/ To bend his back and lay the track across this wild land\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it was on his way home (by car) from his 1979 festival appearance that Kahn wrote \u201cPlains of Canada,\u201d the lyrics of which show his affection for the country \u2013 an affection that endures.<\/p>\n

And so, too, does his love of singing and performing.<\/p>\n

\u201cVancouver resident Josh Dunson, who was my agent for over 30 years until his retirement from the music business, once told me that what I bring to my musical performances is my many years\u2019 experience as an organizer. That\u2019s a very perceptive observation and a good description of what I try to do in the musical part of my life and work,\u201d said Kahn. \u201cWhen I\u2019m planning a concert, when I\u2019m on stage, I\u2019m doing my best to help those who are listening feel that they\u2019re not so much a passive audience but active participants. Sometimes this means singing along, sometimes it means thinking about what they\u2019re hearing and applying it to their own lives and their own work. It\u2019s that possibility that still excites me even after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s folk festival, once again at Jericho Beach, starts with a free concert the night of July 13, and then there are day and weekend passes that can be purchased for the performances July 14-16. For tickets and the full schedule, visit thefestival.bc.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Si Kahn plays at the folk festival, which runs July 13-16. (photo from sikahn.com) While Charlotte, N.C.-based folk musician Si Kahn \u2013 who\u2019s coming to play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next week \u2013 may have called the United States home for most of his 73 years, he spent about 12 of his first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[7232,7231,5491,1959,1546],"class_list":["post-25113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-bristol-bay","tag-si-kahn","tag-social-justice","tag-tikkun-olam","tag-vancouver-folk-music-festival"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}