Mat Callahan (born Mathew Kerner, July 14, 1951, San Francisco, California) is an American musician, author, songwriter, activist, music producer and engineer.
Callahan's father, William Kerner, was a leader of the international peace movement following WWII, joining with Paul Robeson and other notable figures in supporting a non-belligerent US foreign policy particularly in regards to the Soviet Union and China.
His last dance performance was in Charles Weidman's Christmas Oratorio presented on the altar of newly completed Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in 1965.
They headlined a stadium show in front of over 28,000 people in Managua, and returned home to further embrace a style of rock music influenced by “world” rhythms and beats.
In 1986, the Looters toured Europe, supporting their first EP on Alternative Tentacles records, a label founded by iconic punk rocker Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys.
Elements of reggae, rock, funk and afro-caribbean rhythms combined to shape the Looters sound and anchored their attraction as a top live act.
In musical history, it became an incubator and spawning ground for such artists as Primus with Les Claypool, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy with Michael Franti and Charlie Hunter, and Consolidated.
Featuring the Tower of Power horn section, the album was a final swing through the musical styles of rock, afrobeat, Cuban, soca and funk.
Callahan's songwriting increasingly included multi-part harmonies that created song melodies and “hooks” distinctive to rock music of the day, while focusing lyrically on social and economic justice.
One can still say with certainty you’ve never seen or heard anything like the Looters.”[4] Callahan returned to San Francisco to produce projects by artists such as Stephen Yerkey and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (Island Records).
After two solo European releases (Testimony, a “greatest hits” compilation and San Francisco), Callahan released his first U.S. solo album A Wild Bouquet (Broken Arrow Records) which featured remastered songs from the out-of-print Wild Bouquet albums along with a new tract introducing popular Swiss vocalist Yvonne Moore to U.S. audiences.
[6] So it was an obvious extension to see his lyrics comprise the book Testimony (Freedom Voices), a collaboration with Swiss artist and illustrator Mariann Muller.
Published in 2000, the book featured 40 full color reproductions of Muller's paintings combined with the text of Callahan's songs from the Looters’ and Wild Bouquet albums.
Callahan presented Seeger's program for Public Domain reform to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007.
Providing a critical reexamination of a period which shaped San Francisco's global reputation over the subsequent fifty years, The Explosion of Deferred Dreams explores the dynamic links between the Black Panther Party and Sly and the Family Stone, the United Farm Workers and Santana (band), the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the Counterculture.