Biography

Renowned organizer, activist and songwriter Si Kahn is doing what he does best. With the immediate release of his 18th CD “Bristol Bay”, Si combines a wonderful musical album with an urgent call to action that he believes will do its part to help change the world for the better. And it is by working with you, the DJs, your listeners and CD buyers that Si hopes to make “Bristol Bay’s” musical call to action real and effective.

On “Bristol Bay”, Si throws his musical weight and creativity behind the international effort to stop what if built could well be the world’s largest open pit gold and copper mine, the so-called “Pebble Mine” just north of Alaska’s Bristol Bay. 100% of the income from the CD, including Si’s artist and mechanical royalties, will go directly to Musicians United To Protect Bristol Bay, the international network of hundreds of musicians Si is helping organize to help stop the Pebble Mine. How might this affect you personally? 46% of the world’s remaining wild sockeye salmon comes from Bristol Bay.

Women and men who fish commercially and for sport, Alaska Natives who live by subsistence and people who love the outdoors would see the wild salmon and other fish diminish and disappear due to the acid runoff from the mine. More very important reasons to protect Bristol Bay are highlighted throughout the CD.

“Bristol Bay” consists of 15 songs Si wrote after spending two weeks in in Alaska at the invitation of local residents who are fighting to stop the Pebble Mine, and to protect permanently the people, communities, cultures, traditions and wild salmon of Bristol Bay.

Although Si sings about the very things that will bring awareness and action to the situation in Bristol Bay, please don’t expect a series of mournful dirges about the fate of the earth. That’s never been Si’s style, even when approaching serious subjects. As Si has proven again and again, he can write a beautiful series of songs about a serious subject.

Singer, songwriter and author Rosanne Cash puts it this way: “I put Si in the same category as Woody Guthrie, as Pete Seeger, and in a strange way, with my Dad, who shared his righteous sense of humanity, and his love of the ‘meek’, who he truly believed would ‘inherit the earth.’”

There are songs about fishing with your father (“Out On the Lake”, a co-write with Grammy winner Jon Vezner); righteous anger (“Down On the River”): the beauty of the wild salmon (“Upstream”); and even an Alaska drinking song (“The Beauty of Alaska”). Bristol Bay also sparkles with outrageous humor (“Everything Is Bigger in Alaska”); passionate love (“Once When I Was Young,” the CD’s second co-write, with Grammy winner Tom Chapin); and fond memory (“Sailing To Alaska”). The CD’s producer and instrumentalist, banjo genius Jens Kruger of The Kruger Brothers, contributed the 16th track, a beautifully peaceful original instrumental Jens titled “Bristol Bay.”

As Bryce Edgmon, the Alaska State Legislator representing the Bristol Bay area, writes in his introduction to “Bristol Bay”: “That’s why I’m so excited about an internationally known folk singer and activist like Si Kahn lending his musical talents to helping the message get out to an even bigger audience. The CD is great and the songs bring to life the struggle and enduring will involved in this epic battle to protect one of the most cherished ecosystems in all of North America.”

That just about says it all.