Elijah Wald has been a musician since age seven , and a writer since the early 1980s. He has written more than a thousand articles, mostly about folk, roots and international music for various magazines and newspapers, including over ten years as "world music" writer for the Boston Globe. In the current millenium, he has been devoting most of his time to book projects, producing a half-dozen books on subjects ranging from Mexican drug ballads to hitchhiking.