Elijah Wald – Writer, Musician

Welcome to my site. It includes a brief bio and pages about my various books (mostly music-related, though Riding with Strangers is about a cross-country hitchhiking trip). Also about my CD, Street Corner Cowboys, and other writing and album projects, including an instructional DVD on the Bahamian guitar style of Joseph Spence and homemade CDs of African acoustic guitar and early blues. There are also various blues-related pages, pages on contemporary topical corridos, corrido censorship, and interviews with corridistas, appreciations of my father and the Japanese singer Mikami Kan, an archive with several dozen newspaper and magazine pieces on world and roots music among other topics, and whatever else seemed worth putting up here... Including a page about my misleadingly-titled history of American popular music, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll, with links to relevant music, videos, and vintage radio shows. And, most recently, a page on The Dozens, a look at African American insult-dueling and its offshoots in American culture.