David Yaffe

David Yaffe (January 1, 1973 - November 16, 2024) was an American academic who grew up in Dallas, Texas, where he attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He received his BA from Sarah Lawrence, and he began writing for The Village Voice while he was a student there. He received his Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY. He was a professor of humanities at Syracuse University — where he began teaching in 2005 – and is known for his critical writings on music.

His third book, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell (FSG, 2017), was the winner of the ASCAP/Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, and a Washington Post Notable Book of the year, 2017. It has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Danish, and German. It has been optioned for a scripted series with Sony Entertainment.

Among other media appearances, including PBS NewsHour, in December 2018 Yaffe appeared on an episode of BBC Radio 4's Soul Music, discussing the Joni Mitchell song "River".

Death On October 6, 2024, Professor Yaffe was shocked and saddened by the death of his only son, fifteen-year-old Julian. On November 14, 2024, Professor Yaffe was admitted to a New York hospital with abdominal pain. After being treated and released, he returned to his apartment, where he was later found dead.

Works Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing, Princeton University Press, 2006. Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown, Yale University Press, May 24, 2011. Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.