Elijah Wald has been a musician since age seven , and a writer since the early 1980s. He has written more than a thousand articles, mostly about folk, roots and international music for various magazines and newspapers, including over ten years as "world music" writer for the Boston Globe. In the current millenium, he has been devoting most of his time to book projects, producing a half-dozen books on subjects ranging from Mexican drug ballads to hitchhiking.

Before that, I toured as a guitarist and singer, spending the late 1970s and most of the '80s wandering around Europe, Asia, Africa and Central America, fronting a blues band in Seville, a swing duo in Antwerp, and a rock band at the Grand Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (The agent had hired me as an Elvis imitator. It did not work out. There was also a brief period playing alto saxophone in sailor bars, often while standing on a tabletop in cowboy boots...)

As far as more formal gigging goes, I have toured coast to coast in the United States numerous times, and recorded an LP, Songster, Fingerpicker, Shirtmaker (I have lots of copies left. Just let me know if you want one. I ship in bulk, if desired) and a CD, Street Corner Cowboys, which is much, much better. (There is more about both of these projects at my  music page.)

As a musician (and to a great extent as a writer as well), my mentor and main influence was Dave Van Ronk, who gave me a year of guitar lessons, and many years of staying up late at night, listening to records of everything from Bulgarian folk music to Bing Crosby. Dave was a brilliant and omnivorous intellect, and I did my best to capture his voice and a sample of his memories, wit and wisdom in his memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. (There is also information about some of his albums on the aforementioned music page.)

Along with Dave, I picked up stuff from various other musicians over the years, as well as learning a lot from records. (Rev. Gary Davis and Joseph Spence are my longtime guitar heroes, and I recently completed an instructional DVD on Spence'sstyle.) The most interesting experience of this kind was three months in Lubumbashi studying with t he Congolese master Jean-Bosco Mwenda. I play one of Bosco’s tunes on Street Corner Cowboys, but to really get a feel for his music, I recommend the albums on my African acoustic guitar page, as well as African Acoustic, an album I did with Dominic Kakolobango. I also learned a great deal from Perry Lederman, whose posthumous CD is one of my treasures.

As a writer, I have mostly concentrated on music and musicians, with occasional forays into other areas such as culture, politics and hitchhiking. My books can be found on their own pages or on the writings page, which also has links to archived articles written for various magazines and during my years as "world music" critic for The Boston Globe. (Unfortunately, in June of 2000, the Globe presented its freelance contributors with the extortionate demand that they sign away reprint rights, in all media and forever, to everything they had ever written, photographed, etc. for the newspaper, with no payment of any kind. Several hundred freelancers organized in an attempt to preserve our traditional rights, but in the end the Globe won a pyrrhic victory -- they have their new contract, but have lost many of their best writers and photographers.)

At the moment, I continue to work on book projects, to perform whenever possible as a guitarist and singer, and to do some teaching and speaking about the various subjects that interest me. My options in the latter regard have been greatly improved in the last few years by my getting various awards, including a 2002 Grammy for the liner notes to the Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box, the 2001 Best Performing Arts Book award from the Independent Publishers association for Josh White: Society Blues, Best Arts Book at the 2002 Latino Book Awards and an award from the Southwestern Library Association for Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas, an honorable mention for the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for Escaping the Delta, and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for The Mayor of MacDougal Street. As of Fall, 2006, I am teaching blues history at UCLA and working on an alternative history of American popular music.

For those wishing to delve further into my past, I have pages of information and writings by my father, George Wald, who was a major influence both on my performing and writing, and on my life in general. And for a sidelight on my personal life, I recommend a visit to the page of my wife, Sandrine Sheon, the world's most daring paper modeler.