Lecture to link diverse music

Michelle Castillo (Contact)
Published: Thursday, October 12, 2006

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.