Talk: Exploding Musical Myths, from Robert Johnson to Bob Dylan and Beyond
About the Speaker
Elijah Wald is a musician, writer, and historian known for exploring and exploding popular myths of music history. He has toured the world as a solo performer and played and recorded with the founding folk-blues revivalists Dave Van Ronk and Eric Von Schmidt, the legendary Congolese guitarist Jean-Bosco Mwenda, and for five years with the African-American string-band master Howard Armstrong, has a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics, and his numerous awards including a 2002 Grammy.
Wald wrote music journalism for twenty years with the Boston Globe and has published over a dozen books, including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; Narcocorrido, about the Mexican ballads of drug smuggling and social struggle; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama; and two books that inspired hit movies: The Mayor of MacDougal Street, which inspired the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, and Dylan Goes Electric!, which inspired A Complete Unknown. His most recent book is Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, based on the oral memoirs of Jelly Roll Morton.
For further information: https://www.elijahwald.com
About the Music Forum Series
The MIT Music & Theater Arts Music Forum is a series of public presentations by music scholars from inside and outside of MIT. Hosted in the Lewis Music Library and presented in partnership with MIT Libraries, the MTA Music Forum Series gives the MIT Community an opportunity to engage with leading voices in every field of music scholarship. Past presenters include John Harbison, Julia Wolfe, Terry Riley, Don Byron, and others.
