Consumer Guide Album

Si Kahn: Home [Flying Fish, 1979]
This Carolina-based union organizer--who dedicates his second album to his father, Rabbi Benjamin M. Kahn--is the most gifted songwriter to come out of the folkie tradition since John Prine. His overview is political and his songs personal, their overriding theme the emotional dislocations of working far form home. No doubt part of his secret is that he lives among folk rather than folkies, but his understated colloquial precision is sheer talent. Some will consider the all-acoustic music thin (it's often solo or duet, twice a cappella) and the voice quavery. I find that both evoke the mountain music of the '20s in a way that makes me long for home myself, and I'm from Queens. A−