Most people would never draw a connection between Mexican
gangsta rap and the corrido, a type of song that has its origins in
medieval ballads. However, writer, musician and visiting UCLA
professor Elijah Wald tends to think otherwise.
Wald will share his views with the UCLA community today at 5
p.m. in the Green Room of Schoenberg Music Hall. The lecture,
titled “Strange Bedfellows,” will deal not only with
the unorthodox fusion of Mexican rap with the corrido, but also
with jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s publicly overlooked love
for the music of Guy Lombardo. Wald’s talk is one of the many
lectures that are part of the UCLA musicology department’s
Distinguished Lecture Series.
Despite being an avid guitarist and singer, Wald is most famous
for his ten-year career with the Boston Globe as a world music
journalist.
He has won several awards, including the 2001 Best Performing
Arts Book award from the Independent Publishers Association and the
2002 Grammy for the liner notes to the “Arhoolie Records 40th
Anniversary Box.” Currently, Wald is co-instructing Music 22,
a class dedicated to American blues music.
“We discovered him through “˜Discovering the
Delta,’ his famous book on the blues,” said musicology
graduate student Julianne Lindberg, one of the two individuals in
charge of the Distinguished Lecture Series. “He’s
teaching the course here now. It’s the first time I’ve
seen a blues class offered through the musicology
department.”
In keeping with the tradition of having the series put together
by UCLA graduate students, Lindberg and Jessica Bissett, another
musicology graduate student, are the individuals in charge of
inviting Wald as well as the rest of the lecturers.
“The department is fairly well-known nationwide, so when
we invite scholars it’s not that hard to get people to
come,” Bissett said. “Lecturers eat with the students
and give seminars on what they lectured on the night before. UCLA
is a high-powered university, so we are honored to hold a
celebration of the speakers’ works.”
The Distinguished Lecture Series has allowed everyone from
musicologists to historians of various disciplines to lecture about
everything from Western art to contemporary pop music. Past guests
have included New York University professor Kyra Gaunt, who wrote
“The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double
Dutch to Hip-Hop,” and Joshua Rifkin, who led The Bach
Ensemble in 1978 as well as conducted the English Chamber
Orchestra.
“It’s just a way to invite other musicologists from
other colleges and countries to come in speak on the topic they
study or something new in the field,” said Hannah Huang, a
student affairs officer in the musicology department.
“It’s a way to meet these distinguished
scholars.”
Lindberg and Bissett have lined up several renowned speakers
this year. Included in the list are David Brodbeck, a University of
California, Irvine professor famous for his work on Brahms’
music, and Howard Pollock, a musicology professor at the University
of Houston who teaches on the classical tradition of American
music.
“We try to vary it up. As well as inviting people from
outside the UC system, we invite people in the UC system,”
Bissett said. “We get people with different careers who talk
about everything from musicology topics to popular
music.”
Lindberg and Bissett are confident that the lectures will
interest the audience, even those who do not have a musicology
background.
“I think (Wald’s lecture) is a pretty mainstream
topic,” Lindberg said. “In the blues classes, he is
able to engage students. He doesn’t just speak to the
academics. He’s had the experience of being a journalist, so
he knows how to be accessible to the public.”
And if all else fails, Lindberg and Bissett promise to feed the
attendees during the tapas-themed reception after the speech.
“I know the tapas aren’t Mexican, but it will be fun
anyway,” Bissett said.