Generations: Music for Justice

The Si Kahn Living Legacy

The goal of the Si Kahn Living Legacy is to build awareness of, support for, and public access to the amazingly large body of Si Kahn’s creative work that no one except Si has ever seen, and ultimately to keep it alive and easily accessible after he’s gone. Si has been recognized as one of the most important songwriters in social justice work, connecting his cultural work and social activism like so many before him including Pete Seeger (with whom he worked) and Woody Guthrie.

Nora Guthrie and others started the Woody Guthrie Archives long after Woody’s passing. As Si turns the corner to his 80th birthday, it’s a perfect time to think ahead, to gather, catalogue, and make available those of his songs, stories, book manuscripts, and poems that have never before been seen or heard by others. The time to do this is now, while Si is healthy, still creating, and can be a friendly resource to the Living Legacy’s growth and development.

It of course takes funding to build and maintain a major project like this. Your contributions are tax-deductible, as the project is managed by and part of the 501(c)3 non-profit Generations: Music for Justice (EIN 87-1647310).

Let’s do this together, recognizing the importance of Si’s work not just as a writer and activist, but as a humane, generous, deeply kind person who’s spent his entire life trying to make this tired world a kinder, gentler, more just place for all of us.

Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, John McCutcheon

A note from Si:

One of my absolutely most-loved poems, by Marge Piercy, is called To Be of Use. My favorite lines are the last two:

"The pitcher cries out for water to carry

And the person for work that is real"

Growing up, I didn’t know what it meant to be of use, how one would even go about trying to do that.

I learned how to begin when I went South in 1965 as a volunteer with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the young people’s wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Many of the songs we sang to bind us together, to help us overcome fear, to help us find the strength “to keep on keeping on”— those songs were created long, long ago, even before any of us were born, before any of us came to stand in those demonstrations, to walk on those picket lines.

Yet, as old as those songs were, they were of use.

If I had to choose a mantra, a guiding principle for my life, it would probably be one of those old songs, “Let the work that I’ve done speak for me.” Even more, I want the creative work I’ve done to speak for itself, to be helpful to those who are trying to build a world that is kinder, gentler, more just for everyone.

That’s why, in celebration of my 80th birthday, I’m setting up the Si Kahn Living Archive. The collection will eventually include hundreds of songs that have never before been heard by anyone else; song lyrics not yet set to music; SongSpeeches (a mix of poetic rhetoric and a capella song); musical theater scripts; stories for children; poems; poetic tributes to friends and comrades; unpublished book manuscripts; essays; and out-of-print books.

I hope that those workers and fighters, the Sisters and Brothers who come after, will find among the electronic pages of my Living Archive inspiration for their own artistic and political work.

I am within a few days of turning 80 years old. Twenty years from now, it’s possible I will no longer be on this Earth. While my actual last words will probably be unprintable, if I could choose a final wish in advance it would be:

May the work that I’ve done be of use.

Thank you from my heart for helping me celebrate my 80th birthday.

Si Kahn