Novelist, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, and modern Renaissance Man, James Kahn has returned with a timely and bracing new single and video, "Cold Dawn." With a New Orleans rhythm and blues-inflected raspy vocal, Kahn summons the spirits of the best of American art to confront an America dancing along the edge of catastrophe. 

 

One of the failures of the troubled times that define the present is a dearth of protest music. At the precise moment when art should marshal its power to inspire and agitate, many artists, including those with millions of dollars and followers, have chosen to cower in a corner of their own celebrity. 

 

Kahn demonstrates a gratifying and enlivening willingness to sing and play according to, in the words of Martin Luther King, the "fierce urgency of now." His lyrics offer condemnation of the hatred, violence, and fascism that threatens the stability of democracy and the hope for equality, but his chorus pleads with listeners to "hold on" in the "cold dawn." Kahn is rightfully angry. He is also providing an anthem for resistance, solidarity, and tenacity - the very measure of what is necessary to preserve any experiment of self-governance. The music video juxtaposes images of the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan with Donald Trump before cutting to scenes of democratic rebellion. It acts as a musical document of the stakes of the era, while still managing to entertain. 

 

The singable chorus of "Cold Dawn" is infectious, but not cloying. It would offer appropriate accompaniment for any No Kings or anti-ICE rally.