Kelefa Sanneh

Kelefa Sanneh has been a New Yorker staff writer since 2008, when he left his position at the New York Times, where he had been the pop-music critic since 2002. Previously, he was the deputy editor of Transition, a journal of race and culture based at the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University. His writing has also appeared in a number of magazines and a handful of books, including Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z, a Library of America Special Publication, and Da Capo Best Music Writing (2002, 2005, 2007 and 2011).



Over the past half century, many musicians and listeners have belonged to tribes. What’s wrong with that?

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Kelefa Sanneh