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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.

In Honor of Si’s 80th Birthday Today, April 23,

Please Join Us in Launching the Si Kahn Living Legacy

Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, John McCutcheon

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’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 internationally as one of the most important English language social justice songwriters, connecting his cultural work and social activism like so many before him, including Pete Seeger (with whom he worked, toured, and recorded) 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, catalog, and make available those of his songs, stories, book manuscripts, poems, and other creative works that have never before been seen or heard by anyone except Si. The time to do this is now, while he’s healthy, still actively creating, and available as 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 life not just as an organizer and musician, but as a humane, generous, deeply kind person, who has spent his entire life trying to make this tired world a kinder, gentler, more just place for all of us.