In Conversation with Elijah Wald

Boston-based music writer and critic Jim Sullivan and Ty Burr, film critic, will join Elijah Wald, musician and author whose books have served as the inspiration for critically acclaimed films such as INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. He has toured as a performer on five continents and served as student and accompanist to the founding folk-blues revivalists Dave Van Ronk and Eric Von Schmidt, the legendary Congolese guitarist Jean-Bosco Mwenda, and toured for five years with the African-American string-band master Howard Armstrong. He was the Boston Globe’s world and roots music correspondent for twenty years. His books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; Narcocorrido, about the Mexican ballads of drug smuggling and social struggle; Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music; Dave Van Ronk’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, which inspired the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama; and Dylan Goes Electric!, which inspired the hit movie, A Complete Unknown, which was based on his book about Bob Dylan’s relationship to Pete Seeger and journey towards rock ‘n’ roll, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties.