In this episode of The Buzz, JJA board member Bob Blumenthal speaks with two 2025 book award winners: Jonathan Grasse and Elijah Wald.

Jonathan Grasse teaches music at California State University, Dominguez Hills, focusing on world music, theory, and composition. He wrote the definitive English-language study of Brazilian regional music in Hearing Brazil: Music and Histories, and Minas Gerais and examined Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges's 1972 album in The Corner Club. His latest work, Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy (Jawbone Press), won JJA's 2025 Biography of the Year.

Elijah Wald is a musician and author of over a dozen books, including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, The Dozens (about insult games in rap development), and How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll: An Alternative History of Popular Music. He also wrote Dylan Goes Electric, which inspired the film A Complete Unknown. With a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics plus a Grammy for production and liner notes, Wald's Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories earned JJA's 2025 Book of the Year for history, criticism, and culture.

Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need; Connecting jazz, blues, and roots musicians facing crisis with housing support, pro bono medical care, and paid work through nearly 750 community concerts across 17 states. Saving blues, jazz, and roots one musician at a time. jazzfoundation.org.

Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 

For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.