Elijah Wald

Elijah Wald has been performing for almost fifty years in a wide variety of styles, from blues, folk, ragtime, swing, country, and cowboy songs to classic Swahili pop, the Bahamian guitar style of Joseph Spence, and Mexican corridos. He hit the road in his late teens as a rambling busker, and has toured all over the United States and much of the rest of the world, playing in coffeehouses, bars, nightclubs, colleges, concert halls, and on festival stages from New Orleans to Vancouver, Tokyo, and Sydney, including recent tours of Italy and the Czech Republic.Elijahs mentors include Dave Van Ronk, with whom he performed, recorded, and wrote Daves memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street (which inspired the Coen Brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis); Howard Armstrong, the legendary Black string band master, with whom he toured for five years; Eric Von Schmidt, the founding father of the Cambridge folk/blues scene; and Jean-Bosco Mwenda, the father of Congolese acoustic guitar. He won a 2002 Gra