Si Kahn's Biography

Si Kahn has worked for 45 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. His songs of family, community, work and freedom such as Aragon Mill, Wild Rose of the Mountain and Gone, Gonna Rise Again have been recorded by hundreds of artists, including Dick Gaughan, Robin and Linda Williams, June Tabor and the Oyster Band, Patrick Street, Laurie Lewis, Planxty, Hazel Dickens, Dolores Keane and Renaud Séchan.

Si is the founder of the national progressive organization Grassroots Leadership, which is celebrating both its 30th Anniversary and Si’s forthcoming retirement as Executive Director with a national Standing for Justice tour. The farewell tour features Si’s 16th CD Courage (Strictly Country Records SCR 69) about the quiet heroism of everyday people, with Kathy Mattea (harmony vocalist, liner notes) and Jens Krüger of the Krüger Brothers (producer/accompanist).

Also featured on the tour is Si’s new book Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers; Activists and Quiet Lovers of Justice (San Francisco:Berrett-Koehler, 2010), with forewords by Angela Davis and Jim Hightower. In 2005, Berrett-Koehler published The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, coauthored with feminist/public philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, his partner and spouse.

Si’s last CD Thanksgiving received rave reviews in Dirty Linen and Sing Out! It was listed as the #1 CD, the #1 song and the #1 artist for November 2007 by the Richard Gillman Survey of international folk airplay. “Thanksgiving” was picked as the Number 1 song for November 2009 as well.

Si Kahn is an accomplished author and musician who incorporates his passion for people’s rights and dignity into his songwriting, concert and festival performances, conference keynotes, workshops and residencies. In addition to his 16 CDs of original songs, he partnered with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp to record Carry It On (Flying Fish, 1982), a double album of traditional songs from the labor, civil rights and women's movements.

Si performs regularly at festivals and conferences throughout North America and Europe. He is a member of Local 1000 of the American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO; a past trustee of the Labor Heritage Foundation; and the official poet laureate of the North Carolina labor movement by unanimous vote of the convention in 1986. The romantic musical comedy Silver Spoon, for which Si wrote the songs, will have a full production at The Nora Theatre in Cambridge in May-June 2011.

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