Rolf Cahn in Cambridge

Rolf Cahn has arrived in Cambridge on his yearly pilgrimage reviving old arguments about all aspects of his music. Is he a good blues singer? is he a competent flamenco guitarist? is his guitar playing too mechanical?

But Cahn's music is just half the story of Rolf Cahn the person. He was in Berkeley when Odetta was learning to play the guitar; he was in Los Angeles and Chicago when the folk music movements there were in their infancy; and he has influenced more than any other single person the music being played and sung in the coffee houses of Boston and Cambridge.

After a stab at prizefighting and working in the Packard foundry in Detroit, Cahn began his life as a musician among the founders of the American folk music movement--men like Pete Seeger and Millard Lampell. Since the late 1940's he has travelled extensively throughout the United States and to Spain and the Carribean, collecting, teaching, and performing. The Carribbean trip was on a grant from Wayne State University in Detroit, where he met his former wife, blues singer Barbara Dane.

Barbara Dane is one of the many important folk singers whose music bears the stamp of an encounter with Rolf Cahn. Jackie Washington, Debbie Green, Odetta, Jim Kweskin, Tom Rush, Molly Scott and countless others both famous and obscure have also been influenced directly by Cahn and his music.

Folk-Oriented

And what is his music? It must be folk-oriented at least for he sings blues, ballads, Woodie Guthrie songs, flamenco and calypso. But Cahn really doesn't sing folk songs, and he doesn't really sing blues. In the true jazz sense, Cahn's music has become an extension of his own personality and his own unique approach to life, he must be classed as more of a jazz musician than a folk musician. Cahn sings everything with a German-Jewish accent which alienates many purists. But those who judge him in comparison with Eric Von Schmidt, Jack Elliott or Sabicas (depending on which type of music Cahn happens to be playing) miss the point of Rolf Cahn. To borrow a phrase, he's in his own bag, but that bag doesn't keep Cahn from being one of the most exciting performers in folk music.

New Approach

When he arrived in Boston for a three week engagement at the Cafe Yana, he was excited about a new approach to his blues guitar solos. Instead of conceiving a melodic line as a unit, he now lets each individual note lead him to an unrehearsed next note. This, he feels, completely frees him from the cliche. This may or may not be the key to more meaningful improvisation, but have you ever heard a folk singer talk like that? It sounds like something you might have heard at Minton's in the mid-forties when Gillespie and Parker were exploring the new world of bop.