Rolf Cahn

Rolf Cahn (August 14, 1924 – August 1, 1994) was an American folk musician, martial arts teacher, author, radio dj, and social activist. Born in Germany, he and his family, who were Jewish, fled from Adolf Hitler's oppression and arrived in the United States in 1937. They settled in Detroit, Michigan. Cahn later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and thence to Berkeley, California and on to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the 1960s Cahn hosted a Bay Area radio show and gave guitar lessons from his walk-up apartment on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley.

Folk music career Cahn played guitar and recorded several albums of folk music during the time he lived in Berkeley. He was married for a time to the folk and blues singer Barbara Dane, and their son, Jesse Cahn, also became a folk musician. Cahn and Dane were members of the Communist Party USA until the late 1940s, when they were expelled, at least in part because Cahn accepted a policeman as a martial arts student.

In 1962 Cahn was one of the co-founders (with Debbie Green and Howard Ziehm) of The Cabale, at 2504 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, a folk club that featured performers like Mississippi John Hurt, Jesse Fuller, Elizabeth Cotten, Lightnin' Hopkins, and The Chambers Brothers. The Cabale closed in mid 1965.

K'ang jo fu Cahn popularized a self-defense technique called k'ang jo fu (also known as kang jo fu or "the kang") in his 1974 book K'ang Jo Fu: Self Defense for Gentle People.

K'ang jo fu can loosely be translated as "the way of health". Cahn learned the martial art from a visiting Chinese professor at UC Berkeley, Ch'eng Hsue' Yi in 1943.