Bruce Michael Conforth (born September 3, 1950) is an American academic, author, lecturer, and musician. He was the first curator of Cleveland's

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), also simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the ...

Early years

Conforth was born in

Paterson, New Jersey Paterson ( ) is the largest City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Plain Dealer 08 May, 1991, p. 01, sec. A He became an artist and musician at an early age. In 1966, he appeared on an album called ''It's Happening Here'' as the bass player for a band called The Nightwatch. He was an athlete in high school, winning several letters and medals for his abilities as a long jumper, quarter-miler, and a member of the mile-relay team.

The 1960s and 1970s

Conforth joined the early 1960s folk scene in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

. He said that he used to hang out at

Izzy Young Israel Goodman Young (March 26, 1928 – February 4, 2019), known as Izzy Young, was a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden. He was once the owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and from 1973 ...

’s Folklore Center, where he met

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

, Dave Van Ronk,

Harry Belafonte Harry Belafonte ( ; born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte ...

, and others. At

the Gaslight Cafe The Gaslight Cafe was a coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Also called The Village Gaslight, it opened in 1958 and became a venue for folk music and other musical acts. Al Aronowitz. . Retrieved June 25, 2 ...

, he saw and was influenced by such blues musicians as

Son House Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing. After years of hostility to secular music, as a prea ...

Skip James Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. AllMusic stated: "Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James' early recordings ...

, and

Mississippi John Hurt John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Biography Early years John Hurt was born in Teoc,Cohen, Lawrence (1996). Liner notes to ''Av ...

, and he also took guitar lessons from Rev. Gary Davis. "From the crossroads to the classroom", ''Michigan Today'', November 26, 2012
Retrieved 19 September 2021 "Dr. Bruce Conforth", ''Acoustic, Folk and Country Blues''
Retrieved 19 September 2021 After graduating from high school, Conforth received a scholarship to art school, and in 1971, worked as an apprentice to the American

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...

. In 1973, he was the editor of a college literary magazine, through which he made contact with poets

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

and

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...

, and with

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's ...

and

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...

. In 1977, he appeared as "Josh Hawkins" (part of the duet Bates and Hawkins) on an album called ''Ragtime, Blues and Jive'', also featuring fiddler Kenny Kosek.

The 1980s

In 1980, Conforth began attending graduate school at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

, where he majored in

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

ethnomusicology Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context. The discipline investigates social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investiga ...

, and American Studies. He married the former Jeanne Harrah and they combined their last names; for the next decade, he was known as Bruce Harrah-Conforth. He continued to play music, appearing in a local band called The Extremes. While at Indiana University, he worked at the university's Archives of Traditional Music, contributing a number of articles to their newsletter "Resound". Through his work at the Archives, he became involved with the still relatively unknown collection of African-American folk recordings of

Lawrence Gellert Lawrence Gellert (1898-1979?), was a music collector, who in the 1920s and 1930s amassed a significant collection of field-recorded African-American blues and spirituals and also claimed to have documented black protest traditions in the South of th ...

. He produced two albums of songs from this collection. The first, in 1982, was on Rounder Records,"Cap'n You're So mean" (RR#4013 ) was recognized by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

as one of that year's most outstanding folk recordings. The second, "Nobody Knows My Name" was issued by the English company Heritage Records (HT304 ) in 1984. Conforth wrote his 1984 Master's thesis on the collection: "Laughing Just to Keep from Crying: Afro-American Folksong and the Field Recordings of Lawrence Gellert". In 1985, Conforth completed his PhD, which was titled "The Rise and Fall of a Modern Folk Community: Haight-Ashbury 1965-1967." It contains many interviews with the founding musicians of the "San Francisco Sound." During the 1980s, Harrah-Conforth became involved in researching the use of light and sound stimulation in inducing altered states of consciousness in humans. He produced a work titled "Accessing Alternity" that described the history of man's quest into this area. In "A History of Light and Sound", Michael Hutchison wrote:

The report by Harrah-Conforth suggests that sound and light devices may cause simultaneous ergotropic arousal, or arousal of the sympathetic nervous system and the cerebral cortex, associated with 'creative' and 'ecstatic experiences,' and trophotropic arousal, or the arousal of the parasympathetic system, associated with deep relaxation and 'the timeless, "oceanic" mode of the mystic experience.' In humans, Dr. Harrah-Conforth concludes, 'these two states may be interpreted as hyper- and hypo- arousal, or ecstasy and samadhi.

The 1990s

In May 1991, he was named the founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. His initial duties were to create the collections for the Museum. The early years of the Rock Hall saw some tensions develop friction between the two boards of directors: one in Cleveland made of local businessmen, and one in New York City (the location of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation) populated by industry executives such as

Ahmet Ertegun Ahmet Ertegun ( ; , ; July 31, 1923 – December 14, 2006) was a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter, record executive and philanthropist. Ertegun was the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records. He discovered and championed many lead ...

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over the course of its first two decades, starting from the release of its first recor ...

and

Jann Wenner Jann Simon Wenner ( ; born January 7, 1946) is an American businessman who co-founded the popular culture magazine ''Rolling Stone'' with Ralph J. Gleason and is the former owner of '' Men's Journal'' magazine. He participated in the Free S ...

Rolling Stone Magazine ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known ...

. With the construction of the building almost complete, Conforth left the job. He was alleged to have written a tell-all book called "Don't Rock the Hall" but the work has never been published. After leaving the Museum, Conforth was appointed one of six "founding faculty" designated to create the programs for a "New College of Global Studies" being created by

Radford University Radford University is a public university in Radford, Virginia, United States. It is one of the state's eight doctorate-granting public universities. Founded in 1910, Radford offers curricula for undergraduates in more than 100 fields, graduate ...

Radford, Virginia Radford (formerly Lovely Mount, Central City, English Ferry and Ingle's Ferry) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. As of 2020, the population was 16,070 by the United States Census Bureau. For ...

. While there, he worked with noted neuro-psychologist Dr. Karl Pribram at his Center for Brain Research. In 1995, Conforth took his first trip to

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

and immediately developed a deep interest in the region and in the religion of

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ...

. For the following five years, he worked as a trekking guide in that area. The New College eventually closed when Virginia Governor George Allen stripped its budget.

The 2000s - 2010s

In 2000, Conforth was appointed Director of the Jewel Heart Center for

and Culture in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

, founded by the Buddhist teacher, Gelek Rinpoche. He also began teaching part-time at the University of Michigan. He left Jewel Heart in 2004 and became a full-time member of the university's Program in American Culture. As part of the American Culture Department, Conforth developed and taught courses on American popular music, including blues and folk music, and folklore. On March 14, 2012, Conforth received the University of Michigan's

Golden Apple Award The Golden Apple Award (1941–2001) was an American award presented to entertainers by the Hollywood Women's Press Club, usually in recognition of behavior rather than performance. History The award was presented from 1941 until 2001, when ...

for outstanding teaching.

Recent publications and research

In May 2013, Conforth's book ''African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story'', was published by Scarecrow Press, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield publishers. Conforth taught

blues music Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

popular culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of cultural practice, practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art

f. pop art F is the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet. F may also refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * F or f, the number 15 (number), 15 in hexadecimal and higher positional systems * ''p'F'q'', the hypergeometric function * F-distributi ...

or mass art, sometimes contraste ...

, and the history of social movements at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor until 2017. His current work includes researching the life of bluesman

Robert Johnson Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians. Although his r ...

; a 2008 publication concerned Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman, Johnson's main guitar mentor. In 2013, he published the article "The Death of Robert Johnson's Wife" discussing Johnson's wife Virginia Travis and her untimely death during childbirth. He once again published an article on Robert Johnson titled "The Business of Robert Johnson Fakery". The article discussed the identity theft and unscrupulous business of falsely authenticating material (photos, guitars, etc.) supposedly associated with Johnson. In June 2019, Conforth co-authored, with blues scholar and author

Gayle Dean Wardlow Gayle Dean Wardlow (born August 31, 1940) is an American historian of the blues. He is particularly associated with research into the lives of the musicians Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson and the historical development of the Delta blues, on w ...

, a biography of Johnson, ''Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson'', published by Chicago Review Press.Reviews of ''Up Jumped the Devil'': *Greg Cahill, ''Acoustic Guitar''

*Russell Davies, ''Times Literary Supplement''

*David Kirby, ''The Wall Street Journal''

*Greil Marcus, ''The New York Review''

*Gordon Rutherford, ''Louder than War''

*Neil Slaven, ''Blues & Rhythm''

*Frank Valish, ''Under the Radar''

*''Kirkus Reviews''

The book won the 2020 Penderyn Prize for being the best music book of any type for 2019, and also won both of the 27th Annual ''Living Blues'' book awards: the Critics Poll Award as the Best Blues Book of the Year and the Reader's Choice Poll as the Best Blues Book of 2019.

Sexual assault allegations

In April 2021, Conforth was accused of sexually assaulting, harassing, and stalking several students during his tenure at the University of Michigan. This followed Conforth's recommended retirement in 2016, after over 10 years of such reports. Eight students filed a lawsuit in 2022 against the university and against Conforth. The lawsuits against the university were dismissed later the same year because the plaintiffs had not filed a timely notice of intent to sue. The lawsuits against Conforth were dismissed in 2024 for the same reason.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Conforth, Bruce 1950 births Living people Indiana University Bloomington alumni Radford University faculty University of Michigan faculty Writers from Paterson, New Jersey