Wald, Elijah 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born March 24, 1959, in Boston, MA; son of Ruth Hubbard (a professor). Education: Studied music under Dave Van Ronk and Jean-Bosco Mwenda.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, MA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and musician. Toured internationally and in the United States as a singer and guitarist; wrote on folk roots and international music for various magazines in the early 1980s. Boston Globe, Boston, MA, world music critic, 1984-2000; University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, teacher in musicology department.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grammy Award, 2002, for best liner notes.

WRITINGS:

(With Ruth Hubbard) Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1993, third edition, 1999.

(With John Junkerman) River of Song: A Musical Journey down the Mississippi, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Josh White: Society Blues (biography), University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2000.

Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, Amistad (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Dave Van Ronk) The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir, foreword by Lawrence Block, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey, Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music, Routledge (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Boston Globe.

SIDELIGHTS:

Elijah Wald is a musician and writer who has published several books and hundreds of articles, mainly on music-related topics. He began his career touring internationally as a guitarist and singer and has been writing since the early 1980s. Wald's main musical influences are Dave Van Ronk, his mentor and former guitar teacher, and Congolese musician Jean-Bosco Mwenda, with whom he studied for several months in Zaire. He is most known for his freelance articles contributed to the Boston Globe, where he worked as the newspaper's world music critic for over fifteen years.

Wald's first book, Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers, is coauthored with his mother, Ruth Hubbard, and was first published in 1993. Hubbard, a biochemist and former Harvard professor, supplies the theories and scientific data for the book, while Wald serves as writer and collaborator. The two authors discredit the belief that there is a simple correlation between genes and traits, creating a solid argument against genetic reductionism. Wald and Hubbard insist that "the myth of the all-powerful gene is based on flawed science that discounts the environmental context in which we and our genes exist," and have succeeded in writing a scientific and technical book which is accessible to the average reader. Neil A. Holtzman of the New England Journal of Medicine called Exploding the Gene Myth "good reading for anyone who wants to learn more about the science underlying the quest for human genes and the political, social, and ethical implications."

Wald's next book, River of Song: A Musical Journey down the Mississippi, returns him to his area of expertise—music. This book is a companion to a PBS television series highlighting the origins of American music and was written along with the documentary's director, John Junkerman. The two men traveled to nearly seventy locations along the Mississippi and interviewed over five hundred musicians, who tell their stories through music and biographical vignettes. The music profiled in the book includes everything from jazz, blues, and gospel, to punk rock, Ojibwe Indian songs, and hip-hop brass band fusion. A reviewer from Kirkus Reviews reported that "the book offers both an engaging overview of modern American music … and a fascinating glimpse of the ways in which American music continues to reflect and to shape American life." There is also a thirty-six song, two-CD soundtrack that accompanies the book and documentary.

Wald also wrote the first major biography of renowned folk-blues artist Josh White, titled Josh White: Society Blues, which was published in 2000. In this work, Wald chronicles the life of a musician whose contribution to the folk music revivals of the mid-twentieth century had been largely overlooked until recently, following him from his childhood of leading blind singers around the south, to the 1940s and 1950s when he became a celebrated blues recording star. Wald also writes about White's commitment to social activism and his lifelong struggle against discrimination, which often came through in his folk songs.

In Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, Wald traces the development of the corrido, a narrative song popular in Mexico and the American Southwest. Wald pays special attention to the narcocorrido, "a genre of ballad that glorifies gun-toting drug lords in a Mexican version of gangsta rap with accordions," according to Library Journal contributor Dave Szatmary. Through reportage and interviews, Wald chronicles the history of the genre and profiles the musicians who write and perform narcocorridos. According to Nation reviewer Ilan Stavans, Wald "offers an enlightening rendezvous: Rather than dwell on the origin and varieties of this sort of ballad in a scholarly mode, he delivers a travelogue. For almost eight months he hitchhiked, with a guitar on his back, across the Southwest, northern and central Mexico, and down to Chiapas." Stavans added that the author "patiently explores the half-accomplished modernity that colors northern Mexico, where the drug business has radically transformed people's daily routine but has left untouched the sense of morality." As a contributor in Sing Out! remarked: "Wald loves Mexico, warts and all. Yes, a narcocorrido is a song which celebrates drug culture, plain and simple … and, yes, the drug smuggling that passes through Mexico is not necessarily a point of pride within Mexico. But Wald is a Mexiphile who is willing to be candid about the country's lesser side." "It's a huge business, drugs, drug-fueled revolution, and singing about them, and Wald does a superb job of taking his readers into that world," noted a critic in Kirkus Reviews.

In his 2004 work Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, Wald takes a fresh look at the history of blues music and profiles one of its central figures. "Wald's central theme is that, far from being an obscure folk tradition rescued by Alan Lomax and other white field recordists, blues was thriving, diverse popular music," remarked Jeff A. Taylor in Reason. "Wald also expands on the recent welcome trend of knocking down the walls between different styles of music, revealing that musicians, black and white, country and urban, freely stole from one another for decades, to everyone's benefit." "In his narrative," wrote New York Times Book Review contributor Eric Weisbard, "blues emerges as a variant of show business: performers worked different circuits, from vaudeville to tent shows, stealing moves and sounds to make sure that audiences got what they wanted to hear. Urban professional and rural folk sounds fed on each other in ways that can never be fully parsed." In addition, the author presents a biography of Johnson, the legendary guitarist and songwriter whose compositions included "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Love in Vain" and whose influence extended to artists as diverse as Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and the Rolling Stones. "Wald doesn't treat Johnson directly until the middle of the book," observed Booklist critic Ray Olson, "when he invaluably parses each of his recordings to disclose both borrowings and originalities." According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Wald's academic precision aids him in his quest to re-analyze America's perception of the blues as well as in trying to decipher the music's murky true origins and history."

Wald celebrates the joys of the open road in Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey, his 2006 work. Wald details his cross-country trip from New England to the Pacific Northwest, recounting his meetings with a Russian truck driver, a used-car salesman, and a pleasant but persistent missionary, among others. He also offers a history of hitchhiking and provides a list of etiquette suggestions, including when to talk to the driver and where to stand to land a ride. According to Library Journal contributor Joseph L. Carlson, the author "found to his surprise a largely untapped reserve of kindness, courtesy, respect, and friendliness. He emerges victorious with this look at a vanishing way of life." "This agreeable memoir of cross-country adventures is full of good times," commented Booklist reviewer David Pitt, and Judy McAloon, writing in the School Library Journal, called Riding with Strangers "a just-right combination of travelogue, culture peek, and hitching tips."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 1999, Mike Tribby, review of River of Song: A Musical Journey down the Mississippi, p. 118; September 15, 2001, Mike Tribby, review of Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, p. 177; December 15, 2003, Ray Olson, review of Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, p. 718; May 15, 2005, June Sawyers, review of The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir, p. 1627; April 15, 2006, David Pitt, review of Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey, p. 22.

Internet Bookwatch, May, 2006, review of The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1998, review of River of Song, p. 1790; August 15, 2001, review of Narcocorrido, p. 1201; October 1, 2003, review of Escaping the Delta, p. 1217; March 15, 2005, review of The Mayor of MacDougal Street, p. 345; March 1, 2006, review of Riding with Strangers, p. 224.

Lancet, August 28, 1993, Ian N.M. Day, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 540.

Library Bookwatch, March, 2005, review of Escaping the Delta.

Library Journal, January, 1999, Michael Colby, review of River of Song, p. 102; October 15, 2001, Dave Szatmary, review of Narcocorrido, p. 79; January 1, 2004, Eric Hahn, review of Escaping the Delta, p. 116; March 15, 2006, Joseph L. Carlson, review of Riding with Strangers, p. 89.

MBR Bookwatch, September, 2005, Diane C. Donovan, review of The Mayor of Macdougal Street.

Nation, January 7, 2002, Ilan Stevens, "Trafficking in Verse," review of Narcocorrido, p. 43.

National Review, March 22, 2004, "Who's Got a Right to Sing the Blues?," review of Escaping the Delta, p. 14.

New England Journal of Medicine, November 25, 1993, Neil A. Holtzman, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 1662.

New Scientist, October 23, 1993, Lynda Burke, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 38.

New Statesman, September 9, 1994, Marek Kohn, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 40.

New York Times, February 28, 2004, Ben Sisario, "Revisionists Sing New Blues History," review of Escaping the Delta, p. B7.

New York Times Book Review, September 12, 1993, Daniel Callahan, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 26; October 31, 2004, Eric Weisbard, "The Ancestors of Pop," review of Escaping the Delta, p. 31; July 3, 2005, Dave Itzkoff and Alan Light, "Music Chronicle," review of The Mayor of MacDougal Street, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, March 8, 1993, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 58; November 23, 1998, review of Exploding the Gene Myth, p. 52; November 3, 2003, review of Escaping the Delta, p. 66; January 16, 2006, review of Riding with Strangers, p. 44.

Reason, June, 2004, Jeff A. Taylor, review of Escaping the Delta, p. 57.

School Library Journal, June, 2006, Judy McAloon, review of Riding with Strangers, p. 195.

Sing Out!, summer, 2002, review of Narcocorrido, p. 124; summer, 2004, Andy Cohen, review of Escaping the Delta, p. 112.

Time, January 11, 1999, Christopher John Farley and John Junkerman, "Sounding the Waters: PBS Explores the Music along the Mississippi," p. 95.

Variety, February 1, 1999, Phil Gallo, review of River of Song, p. 30.

OTHER

Beacon Press Web site,http://www.beacon.org/ (January 9, 2002).

Elijah Wald Web site,http://www.elijahwald.com (December 18, 2001).

Fayetteville Observer Online,http://www.fayettevilleobserver.com/ (April 18, 1999), Jim Washington, "Josh White, Jr., Follows in His Father's Footsteps."

Keysound Web site,http://www.keysound.com/ (January 9, 2002).

New England Journal of Medicine Web site,http://www.nejm.org/ (January 9, 2002).

Powells.com,http://www.powells.com/ (January 9, 2002).

Public Broadcasting Service Web site,http://www.pbs.org/riverofsong/ (January 9, 2002), review of River of Song.

World Music Central Web site,http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/ (December 2, 2006), review of Global Ministries.