KAHAN, SALOMON

KAHAN, SALOMON (1896–1965), Yiddish essayist and musicologist. Born in Bialystok, he was educated in Warsaw and Berlin and immigrated to Mexico City in 1921 where he was professor of the history of modern civilization at the Mexican National Teachers' College (1925–39). He served as music critic for Mexican dailies and, between 1936 and 1964, published five volumes of critical and impressionistic articles on music, written in Spanish. He was editor of Der Veg (Mexico City, 1945–48), and managing editor of Tribuna Israelita (1953–65). He played an important role in the cultural life of Mexico's Jewish community and collected his many essays on literature, music, and important Jewish and Mexican personalities in five Yiddish volumes, of which the most significant was his Literarishe un Zhurnalistishe Fartseykhnungen ("Literary and Journalistic Sketches," 1961). He published an abridged Spanish translation of graetz 's History of the Jews under the title Historia del pueblo de Israel. His son, José Kahan, achieved renown as a concert pianist. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Glatstein, Mit Mayne Fartogbikher (1963), 413–8. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: LNYL, 8 (1981), 22–23; Y. Rapoport, Fragmentn fun a Lebn (1967), 79–86. (Sol Liptzin)