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12-Year Old Charlie Herbert Analyzes “Aragon Mill” By Si Kahn

Feb 7, 2023

Last summer I had a fine time hanging out and talking shop with Charlie Herbert, a 12-year-old Canadian musician. Charlie had a poetry assignment in school recently, and chose to write about my song “Aragon Mill.” He even took the lyrics from the powerful version of the song African American gospel and freedom singer Jane Sapp did on Carry It On, a double album of traditional labor and civil rights songs that Jane, Pete Seeger and I recorded together and color coded them to show the literary devices used.
I was sent to the town of Aragon, Georgia by the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) shortly after the mill closed in 1972, to try to see if anything could be done. I wrote the song based on what one of the workers told me.