Bruce Conforth
Encyclopedia
Bruce Michael Conforth was the first curator of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and is presently a professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan
.
, and grew up in New Jersey and New York City. 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. The liner notes read as follows:
He was also 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.
in New York City
's Greenwich Village
. He knew, and studied with performers such as Dave Van Ronk
, Happy
and Artie Traum
, Izzy Young
, Reverend Gary Davis
, and Allen Ginsberg
. He frequented Izzy Young's Folklore Center, the Fretted Instruments music center, The Cafe Au Go Go
, Cafe Wha?
(where Jimi Hendrix
performed as Jimi James and the Blue Flames), The Balloon Farm in the East Village
(which later became the Electric Circus), the 8th Street Bookstore, and Washington Square Park
.
During this time he also made the acquaintance of Drs. Timothy Leary
and Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Dass), and began his interest in altered states of consciousness.
Conforth received a scholarship to art school after graduation from high school and while enrolled spent one summer as an apprentice to the American abstract expressionist
Willem de Kooning
at the latter's Springs, New York
studio. de Kooning became his strongest artistic influence.
He had several shows of his work but then seems to have dropped painting to turn his attention to music. He played with several bands during this time, although their exact names are unknown (much time and speculation has been devoted to identifying the names of these bands).
manager of the MC5
.
In 1973 he was the editor of a short-lived literary magazine called Slowglass whose contributors included Charles Bukowski
, Allen Ginsberg
, and John Lennon
.
In 1977 he appeared as "Josh Hawkins" (part of the duet Bates and Hawkins) on an album called "Ragtime, Blues and Jive" (also featuring fiddle great Kenny Kosek) and performed under that name around the East Coast (New York's Gerde's Folk City, The Bitter End) and at the Middletown Folk Festival in Middletown, New Jersey.
, ethnomusicology
, 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". More importantly it was through his work at the Archives that he became involved with the still relatively unknown collection of African-American folk recordings of Lawrence Gellert
. 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
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.
Norm Cohen reviewed these albums for The Journal of American Folklore
, Vol. 99, No. 391 (Jan. - Mar., 1986), pp. 102–117
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." The following year he was appointed Director of the Indiana UniversityArchives, a post he held until 1991 when he left to become the first curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
.
Harrah-Conforth wrote in Megabrain Report: "I have little doubt that brain entrainment technology is a highly effective means of inducing changes in consciousness. [...] The evolution of human consciousness is a tangibly manipulable process. We can control our destiny. It would appear as though brain entrainment will be among the technologies leading the way."
, Yoko Ono
, Ringo Starr
, U2
, Eric Clapton
, Ray Charles
, B. B. King
, The Everly Brothers
, The Kinks
, Jeff Beck
, Tom Petty
, The Yardbirds
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
, Eric Burdon
, Dire Straits
, Neil Young
, Aretha Franklin
, Johnny Cash
, The Beach Boys
, The Doors
, James Brown
, Carl Perkins
, and The Eagles, some of whom he had known during his own days as a performer. 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
of Atlantic Records
and Jann Wenner
of Rolling Stone Magazine. 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.
in Radford, Virginia
. 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
and immediately developed a deep interest in the region and in the religion of Tibetan Buddhism
. 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.
In 1996 Conforth founded, with his third wife Cynthia Swartz (since divorced), Castalia II, an organization dedicated to the exploration of consciousness. Board members included Dr. Timothy Leary
, Dr. Charles Tart
, Dr. John Beresford
(of the Albert Hofmann
Foundation), physicist Dr. Fred Alan Wolf
, and other "psychedelic
" notables.
and Culture in Ann Arbor, Michigan
, founded by the Buddhist teacher, Gelek Rinpoche. He also began teaching part-time at the University of Michigan. After the 9/11 tragedy, with charitable donations drying up, he left Jewel Heart in 2004 and became a full-time member of the University's Program in American Culture.
Conforth teaches folklore
, blues music, popular culture
, and the history of social movements at the University of Michigan and is, apparently, a popular teacher.
His current work includes researching the life of bluesman Robert Johnson; a recent publication concerns Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman, Johnson's main guitar mentor.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
and is presently a professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
.
Early years
Conforth was born September 3, 1950 in Paterson, New JerseyPaterson, New Jersey
Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023...
, and grew up in New Jersey and New York City. 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. The liner notes read as follows:
Too Long - The Nightwatch
Here is another composition from the repertoire of the talented Bob Carnevale-Roy Francia writing team. Bob sings lead vocal on this one and also does some interesting work on rhythm guitar. (Bob prefers an acoustic guitar with electric pickup for rhythm work, due to its original sound.) Roy, also a fine classical guitarist, does lead guitar and second vocal. Bassman for the Nightwatch is Bruce Conforth, who is also a prolific poet and artist. Skip Daly creates a good solid beat on the drums.
He was also 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
Conforth joined the early 1960s folk sceneAmerican folk music revival
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
. He knew, and studied with performers such as Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, Happy
Happy Traum
Happy Traum is an American folk musician who started playing music in the Fifties. Happy is most famously known as one half of Happy and Artie Traum, a duo he began with his brother...
and Artie Traum
Artie Traum
Artie Traum was a New Age Voice Award-winning guitarist, producer and songwriter. Traum's work appeared on more than 35 albums...
, Izzy Young
Izzy Young
Israel Goodman Young or Izzy Young is a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden.He is the former owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and since 1973, he has owned and operated the Folklore Centrum store in Stockholm.- Biography :In 1957, on...
, Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica...
, and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
. He frequented Izzy Young's Folklore Center, the Fretted Instruments music center, The Cafe Au Go Go
Cafe Au Go Go
The Cafe au Go Go was a Greenwich Village night club located in the basement of 152 Bleecker Street. The club featured many well known musical groups, folksingers and comedy acts between the opening in February 1964 until closing in October 1969. Originally owned by Howard Solomon who sold the club...
, Cafe Wha?
Cafe Wha?
Cafe Wha? is a club in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York City that has been home to various musicians and comedians. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, The Velvet Underground, Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, Kool and the Gang, Peter, Paul & Mary, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Joan...
(where Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
performed as Jimi James and the Blue Flames), The Balloon Farm in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
(which later became the Electric Circus), the 8th Street Bookstore, and Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
.
During this time he also made the acquaintance of Drs. Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
and Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Dass), and began his interest in altered states of consciousness.
Conforth received a scholarship to art school after graduation from high school and while enrolled spent one summer as an apprentice to the American abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
at the latter's Springs, New York
Springs, New York
Springs is a census-designated place roughly corresponding to the hamlet by the same name in the town of East Hampton in Suffolk County, New York on the South Fork of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the hamlet population was 4,950...
studio. de Kooning became his strongest artistic influence.
He had several shows of his work but then seems to have dropped painting to turn his attention to music. He played with several bands during this time, although their exact names are unknown (much time and speculation has been devoted to identifying the names of these bands).
The 1970s
Conforth was a member of a band called Ruby and the Dykes, which toured the East Coast. He also played with a band called The Shook, and was a friend of John SinclairJohn Sinclair (poet)
John Sinclair is a Detroit poet, one-time manager of the band MC5, and leader of the White Panther Party — a militantly anti-racist countercultural group of white socialists seeking to assist the Black Panthers in the Civil Rights movement — from November 1968 to July 1969...
manager of the MC5
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...
.
In 1973 he was the editor of a short-lived literary magazine called Slowglass whose contributors included Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, and John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
.
In 1977 he appeared as "Josh Hawkins" (part of the duet Bates and Hawkins) on an album called "Ragtime, Blues and Jive" (also featuring fiddle great Kenny Kosek) and performed under that name around the East Coast (New York's Gerde's Folk City, The Bitter End) and at the Middletown Folk Festival in Middletown, New Jersey.
The 1980s
In 1980 Conforth began attending graduate school at Indiana University, where he majored in folkloreFolklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
, 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
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
he worked at the University's Archives of Traditional Music, contributing a number of articles to their newsletter "Resound". More importantly it was through his work at the Archives that he became involved with the still relatively unknown collection of African-American folk recordings of Lawrence Gellert
Lawrence Gellert
Lawrence Gellert, born September 14, 1898 in Budapest, Hungary, died 1979 , was a music collector who in the 1920s and 1930s documented black protest traditions in the South of the United States...
. 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
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
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.
Norm Cohen reviewed these albums for The Journal of American Folklore
Journal of American Folklore
The Journal of American Folklore is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Folklore Society. Since 2003 this has been done on its behalf by the University of Illinois Press. The journal has been published since the society's founding in 1888. It publishes on a quarterly schedule...
, Vol. 99, No. 391 (Jan. - Mar., 1986), pp. 102–117
Cap'n You're So Mean: Negro Songs of Protest, Vol. 2 (Rounder 4013). Twenty-four previously unpublished field recordings mostly of protest songs, collected in the southern states in the 1920s
and 1930s by Lawrence Gellert. [...]
Gellert's field collecting in the south, which resulted in some remarkably candid protest material (the genuineness of which was at one time questioned) has been neglected too long. (An album he prepared for publication in the 1940s was not issued until 40 years later [...]. If ever an album required and deserved extensive documentation, this is it - and not because we still doubt its authenticity. Happily, Conforth has now found Gellert's original fieldnotes. [...] Another [...] package of Gellert collectanea, also edited by Conforth, is nonprotest material, Nobody Knows My Name (Heritage HT 304).
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." The following year he was appointed Director of the Indiana UniversityArchives, a post he held until 1991 when he left to become the first curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
.
Altered States of Consciousness Research
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. His research into this field has been cited as a hallmark of its kind. In "A History of Light and Sound", Michael Hutchison wrote:
"In 1990 Bruce Harrah-Conforth, Ph.D., of Indiana University completed a controlled study....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.'"
Harrah-Conforth wrote in Megabrain Report: "I have little doubt that brain entrainment technology is a highly effective means of inducing changes in consciousness. [...] The evolution of human consciousness is a tangibly manipulable process. We can control our destiny. It would appear as though brain entrainment will be among the technologies leading the way."
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
In May 1991 Conforth became the curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. His initial duties were to create the collections for the Museum. Among the artists he worked with were The Allman Brothers, The Grateful DeadGrateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
, Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
, U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
, Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
, Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
, B. B. King
B. B. King
Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...
, The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...
, The Kinks
The Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1964. Categorised in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks are recognised as one of the most important and influential rock acts of the era. Their music was influenced by a...
, Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck
Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck is an English rock guitarist. He is one of three noted guitarists to have played with The Yardbirds...
, Tom Petty
Tom Petty
Thomas Earl "Tom" Petty is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and was a founding member of the late 1980s supergroup Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch. He has also performed under the pseudonyms of Charlie T...
, The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
, Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
, Dire Straits
Dire Straits
Dire Straits were a British rock band active from 1977 to 1995, composed of Mark Knopfler , his younger brother David Knopfler , John Illsley , and Pick Withers .Dire Straits' sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest...
, Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
, Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...
, Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
, The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...
, The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
, James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
, Carl Perkins
Carl Perkins
Carl Lee Perkins was an American rockabilly musician who recorded most notably at Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, beginning during 1954...
, and The Eagles, some of whom he had known during his own days as a performer. 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
Ahmet Ertegün was a Turkish American musician and businessman, best known as the founder and president of Atlantic Records. He also wrote classic blues and pop songs and served as Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and museum...
of Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
and Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
of Rolling Stone Magazine. 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.
The 1990s: The Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism, and Castalia II
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 UniversityRadford University
Radford University is one of Virginia's eight doctoral-degree granting public universities. Originally founded in 1910, Radford offers comprehensive curricula for undergraduates in more than 100 fields, and graduate programs including the M.F.A., M.B.A...
in Radford, Virginia
Radford, Virginia
Radford is a city in Virginia, United States. The population was 16,408 in 2010. For statistical purposes, the Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Radford with neighboring Montgomery County, including the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg, calling the combination the...
. While there he worked with noted neuro-psychologist Dr. Karl Pribram
Karl H. Pribram
Karl H. Pribram is a professor at Georgetown University, in the United States, and an emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at Stanford University and Radford University...
at his Center for Brain Research.
In 1995 Conforth took his first trip to Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
and immediately developed a deep interest in the region and in the religion of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
. For the following five years he worked as a trekking guide in that area. The New College eventually closed when Virginia Governor George Allen
George Allen (U.S. politician)
George Felix Allen is a former United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the son of former NFL head coach George Allen. Allen served Virginia in the state legislature, as the 67th Governor, and in both bodies of the U.S. Congress, winning election to the Senate in 2000...
stripped its budget.
In 1996 Conforth founded, with his third wife Cynthia Swartz (since divorced), Castalia II, an organization dedicated to the exploration of consciousness. Board members included Dr. Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, Dr. Charles Tart
Charles Tart
Dr. Charles T. Tart is an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness , as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology. He earned his Ph. D...
, Dr. John Beresford
John Beresford
John Beresford PC, PC was an Irish statesman.-Background and education:Beresford was a younger son of Sir Marcus Beresford, who, having married Catherine, sole heiress of James Power, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, was created Earl of Tyrone in 1746...
(of the Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann was a Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide . He authored more than 100 scientific articles and a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child...
Foundation), physicist Dr. Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and more recently has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel...
, and other "psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
" notables.
Current career
In 2000, Conforth was appointed Director of the Jewel Heart Center for Tibetan BuddhismTibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
and Culture in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, founded by the Buddhist teacher, Gelek Rinpoche. He also began teaching part-time at the University of Michigan. After the 9/11 tragedy, with charitable donations drying up, he left Jewel Heart in 2004 and became a full-time member of the University's Program in American Culture.
Conforth teaches folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, blues music, popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
, and the history of social movements at the University of Michigan and is, apparently, a popular teacher.
His current work includes researching the life of bluesman Robert Johnson; a recent publication concerns Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman, Johnson's main guitar mentor.