Bluesman Taj Mahal Is Playin' For Keeps

By John Roos

This article is dedicated to Helen Siciliano (1932-2021)

Built in Agra in the 1600’s by order of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, the Taj Mahal is the jewel of Muslim Indian art and one of the world’s universally admired masterpieces.

It is with some irony, then, that Henry St. Clair Fredericks adopted the name Taj Mahal as his stage moniker. The blues-based singer, songwriter and musician has revealed that the name Taj Mahal came to him in his dreams about Gandhi, India, and social tolerance. Only this Taj Mahal doesn’t see himself as all that majestic.

“It’s never been about ‘Watch me,’ said Mahal during a recent phone interview from his home in Berkeley. “The audience is part of the performance. It’s not like I’m up here on stage and they’re all down there. I’m just one man trying to make a global connection that anyone can plug in to.”

Born in Harlem to musical parents—his father was a jazz pianist with Caribbean roots, his mother a gospel-singing schoolteacher from North Carolina—Mahal grew up conscious of his African roots and developed a keen appreciation for his personal history and the arts.

In the 1950’s, after his family moved to Springfield, MA, it was here that Mahal mixed well with immigrants from across the globe who immersed themselves in neighborhood jam sessions and dance parties featuring music from the Caribbean, the American South, Europe, the Mediterranean , Syria, Lebanon, and Africa. Mahal eventually made his way to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he double-majored in animal husbandry and agriculture, which satisfied his hunger to be allied in a meaningful way with our planet.

Mahal was bit by the musical bug in 1964 so he headed west to Los Angeles where he formed a six-piece band with Ry Cooder called the Rising Sons. That group never took off but over the next six decades, Mahal has endured while embracing a lot of musical genres to include acoustic and electric blues, Latin, reggae, Caribbean, calypso, Cajun, jazz, and Hawaiian music. The common thread throughout is an Afro-centric roots base that pays respect to tradition while simultaneously pushing the music forward.

Comfortable playing solo or fronting stylistically diverse bands, Mahal plays electric and acoustic guitar, harmonica, piano, mandolin, ukulele, bass, and banjo, each one adding the perfect complement to his ragged-but-right vocals. His signature instrument is the resonator guitar, which for the uninitiated, functions by transferring the vibrations from the strings of the guitar, through the bridge, to a ‘resonator’ (e.g. a metal cone or cones) located within the body of the guitar. The metal cone directs the timbre of the guitar to produce a brighter tone than traditional steel-string acoustic guitars.

Mahal’s longevity is quite something to behold in an industry beholden to sales over creativity. Despite a lukewarm marketplace, he recorded an amazing 16 albums for a variety of record labels during his most prolific decade, the 1990s. Back-to-back Grammy wins for the Best Contemporary Blues Album recognized two terrific projects with the Phantom Blues Band: "Señor Blues" and "Shoutin’ in Key." Equally impressive were 1991’s hip-shaking “Dancin’ the Blues,” a collaboration with Indian slide guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on 1995’s “Mumtaz Mahal,” and 1998’s breezy, cross-pollinating “Taj Mahal and the Hula Blues.” And, let’s not forget several of his children’s albums, including “Smilin’ Island of Song” (1992) and “Shakin’ a Tailfeather” (1997), recordings that Mahal conceived to introduce kids to world music.

Other collaborations with Hawaiian, African, and Indian musicians further expanded Mahal’s reach deeper into new musical waters. Particularly ambitious was his pairing with Malian kora (it's a 21-stringed lute-like instrument) master Toumani Diabate titled "Kulanjan" (1999), which they recorded in an Athens, GA, studio with a sextet of West African string instrumentalists and vocalists.

More recently, Mahal teamed up with bluesman Keb Mo’ for 2017’s cleverly-titled "TajMo," a gentle, life-affirming collection of songs that I promise will soothe your soul. (For a glimpse of Mahal and Mo’ playing their version of Sleepy John Estes’ “Diving Duck Blues,” click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iqTRNUOsFI.) Although "TajMo" earned Mahal his third Grammy award, he simply sighs when asked about receiving awards from an industry that throughout his career hasn’t figured out the earthly essence of his eclectic musical stylings.

“I’ve always seen the bigger picture, that a majority of people in this world don’t know that the Top 10, Top 20, or Top 100 even exist,” said Mahal, who cites Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Sleepy John Estes, Jesse Ed Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Willie McTell as his biggest musical influences. “There are 7 billion people on this planet and what’s considered commercially viable doesn’t interest the majority of them. So why would I limit myself to what record executives think will sell?”

As much as Mahal follows his muse to stretch and redefine traditional folk, world and blues music, some misconceptions by the general public linger still.

“You’re familiar with people who think that only certain people can play the blues . . . that you have to be strung out on drugs or born in the Mississippi Delta, but that’s all a bunch of nonsense,” said Mahal, who’s inspired such younger, contemporary bluesmen as Alvin Youngblood Hart, Marcus “Mookie” Cartwright, Ben Harper, and Kelly Joe Phelps, among others. “Or, they’ll say the music and words are too sad. But you know what? I don’t play any self-pity (music). This is feel-good music that will lift your spirits. We just have to open up our hearts.”

Mahal said he enjoyed the break from performing and recording during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, even though he turns 80 next year, he’s not about to slow down.

“I’m in this thing for the long haul,” Mahal declared, “and for me, that means ignoring conventional wisdom and just playing music for the love of it. I’m hard-headed and will continue doing this for as long as I’m breathing. Just like Lightnin’ Hopkins, I learned early on (that) playing music is what I do.”

*Blue Note at the Charles Krug Winery Outdoor Music Series presents Taj Mahal performing solo Sat.-Sun., Aug. 21-22, 2800 Main Street, St. Helena. (707) 880-2300. ‎ Show times: Saturday, 5:30 and 8:30 pm; Sunday, 4 and 7:30 pm. $59-$89. www.bluenotenapa.com. Note: These shows have been moved from the Blue Note in Napa. In accordance with California's current COVID-19 guidelines, certain terms and conditions apply for entry.