One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century
blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist
Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional
acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm,
Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologist's interest in a multitude of
folk and roots music from around the world --
reggae and other Caribbean folk,
jazz,
gospel,
R&B,
zydeco, various West African styles,
Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed
Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the
blues as part of a wider musical context.
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One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century
blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist
Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional
acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm,
Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologist's interest in a multitude of
folk and roots music from around the world --
reggae and other Caribbean folk,
jazz,
gospel,
R&B,
zydeco, various West African styles,
Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed
Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the
blues as part of a wider musical context.
Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed too far from his laid-back
country blues foundation.
Blues purists naturally didn't have much use for
Mahal's music and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still,
Mahal's concept seemed somewhat vindicated in the '90s, when a cadre of young bluesmen began to follow his lead -- both acoustic revivalists (
Keb' Mo',
Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (
Corey Harris,
Alvin Youngblood Hart).
Taj Mahal was born
Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents -- his father a
jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang
gospel -- moved to Springfield, MA, when he was quite young and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his father's short-wave radio. He particularly loved the
blues -- both acoustic and electric -- and early rock & rollers like
Chuck Berry and
Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias
Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed
Taj Mahal & the Elektras, which played around the area during the early '60s. After graduating,
Mahal moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local
folk-blues scene, formed
the Rising Sons with guitarist
Ry Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didn't quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of
Americana, which anticipated a number of
roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.
Frustrated,
Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage
blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the
blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s
blues revival, as did its follow-up,
Natch'l Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969 and taken together, those three records built
Mahal's reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s,
Mahal's musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971's Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following year's double-live set,
The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973,
Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder and the following year he recorded his most
reggae-heavy outing,
Mo' Roots.
Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976, upon which point he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in
Mahal's work and he spent much of the '80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition.
Mahal returned in 1987 with
Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received children's albums with
Shake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned
Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991. The same year marked
Mahal's full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label,
Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as
Dancing the Blues (1993) and
Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more
rock, pop, and
R&B-flavored territory; in 1997,
Mahal won a Grammy for
Seņor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world music. 1995's
Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with
classical Indian musicians; 1998's
Sacred Island was recorded with his new
Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater depth; 1999's
Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player
Toumani Diabate.
Maestro appeared in 2008 from Heads Up Records. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide
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