|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
Blues traveller
Taj Mahal's globetrotting has brought him into contact with everyone from the Rolling Stones to a band of Saharan nomads. Robin Denselow meets the man who has taken the phrase 'world music' to a new level
Friday June 10, 2005
The Guardian
'I didn't need to go to school to study Afro-musicology' ... Taj Mahal
It's getting on for midnight at the Blue Note, down in New York's Greenwich Village, and the blues guitarist on stage is clearly enjoying himself. It's a hot night, there's an enthusiastic capacity crowd that includes Sven-Goran Eriksson and a selection of British soccer celebs, and Taj Mahal is doing what he does best. His big band are no longer with him, and instead he's back leading his long-serving trio. Bill Rich is on bass, Kester Smith on drums, and the nimble but bulky singer is up front, playing slinky, rhythmic, finger-picking guitar as he purrs and growls through old favourites like Creole Belle, Fishin' Blues and Queen Bee. "I wasn't playing as much guitar with the large band," he said afterwards, "and the older musicians like Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin' Hopkins used to say that the song should stand on his own." For his encore he switches direction again, announcing the gently drifting, atmospheric instrumental Zanzibar, influenced by the East African island where his last album, Mkutano, was recorded.
Now 63, Taj Mahal is as enthusiastic as ever. He may have started out working with Ry Cooder and getting help from the Rolling Stones, and he may have played in the past with such West African virtuosos as Toumani Diabate and guitarist Ali Farka Touré, but in Zanzibar he was faced with a very different culture. Here, he worked alongside the island's best-known musicians, the Culture Music Club, the longest-established band anywhere in Africa. They are exponents of Taraab, a style influenced by the Arabic roots of the Swahili-speaking traders who settled on the island, along with echoes of Indian styles.
Wasn't that a long way from the blues, even for a traveller like himself? "Well, I don't know if it is a long way from the blues, because many of the blues people who came to the United States had been converted to Islam, and the style fell off from that, and got mixed in with Celtic music and different African forms. But there clearly is an Arabic influence in East Africa, and I enjoyed that a lot." Taj Mahal is a great man to talk to, but far harder to interview, simply because he is so enthusiastic that he constantly darts from subject to subject. Asked about his early interest in African music, he replied: "The connection has always been there, but knowledge of that connection ... well, just reading about it is like reading Kant or Freud ... you read a lot of words but there's not a lot of juice. I didn't need to go to school to study Afro-musicology."
His father, who came from from the Caribbean island of St Kitts, had discussed going back to Africa "but never lived long enough to fulfil that dream", and Taj Mahal himself first visited the continent "on some government cultural exchange programme" back in 1979. Along with his current rhythm section, he toured right across Africa: "From Senegal, Niger and the Congo down to Kenya and Zambia, playing all the time, with some big concerts and workshops, and meeting young musicians who had never heard music from outside their own village." He went on to record with the Gambian musician Al Haj Bai Kante, and later with Diabate, the Malian kora virtuoso .
Last year, at the London Barbican, Taj Mahal made a stirring appearance alongside Tinariwen, the exponents of desert blues from the Sahara. They had met for the first time in a rehearsal room the previous day, and it was a lesson in diplomacy to watch how Mahal chatted to them briefly (in French), listened to what they were doing, and then joined in, now sounding like some north African answer to Howlin' Wolf.
If there is a new, global music scene involving interaction between different artists, then Taj Mahal has been one of the pioneers. Brought up in Springfield, Massachusetts, back in the days when he was still known as Henry Saint Claire Fredericks, he grew up in a background where "music was like walking into the street and breathing air". His father had been a musician, and his Jamaican stepfather built a bar and a sound system into the basement of the family house. "The Jamaicans would all come round - many of them used to come north to pick crops." While still at school he started playing guitar, and taking an interest in the blues. "I met up with some guys from Carolina and Mississippi with southern blues roots. So I lucked up. If I had missed that I would have just been a listener."
It took time for him to become professional. He worked on tobacco and then dairy farms to make the money to send himself to college "to be an example to my brothers and sisters" (he was the oldest of nine children in the family). He earned a degree in agriculture and animal husbandry "because I loved anything outdoors", and started playing at Amhurst with the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society. Then he started a band, the Elektras - "playing R&B because I couldn't find musicians to play the old blues stuff" - and travelled to the New York clubs or the Newport folk festival to check out the great veteran bluesmen.
His first, typically uneasy, brush with the recording industry came in 1966, when he moved to Los Angeles with his then musical partner, Jesse Lee Kincaid. Kincaid was friends with a young local guitarist, Ry Cooder, and together they decided to start a band, the Rising Sons, "demonstrating guitars at a place called the Teenage Fair, and just playing straight-ahead, right-off delta blues". He remembers Cooder as a musician who "only sang background now and then, but was a fantastic multi-instrumentalist - just incredible. The possibilities working with him were astounding." The record companies didn't see it the same way, and the Sons broke up "all mired and bogged down with legalese".
Since then, Taj Mahal and Cooder have followed a remarkably similar path. Both had links with the Rolling Stones, and both have strong connections with Africa (Cooder recorded the classic album Talkin' Timbuktu with Touré, while Taj Mahal recorded another fine set, Kalanjan, with Diabate, Touré's current musical partner). "In actuality", says Taj Mahal, "Ali came to me and I was in the middle of a lot of things so we didn't get plugged in ... so I guess that Ry was his number two choice ... but Ry recorded with him and they did some really wonderful things."
Could he imagine ever playing with Cooder again? "Never say never, but it certainly hasn't worked out. I haven't seen Ry in ... Jeez, I don't know how long. He's somewhat of a recluse and he's an eccentric kind of guy. When I met him he was 17 but he could have been 50 years old already."
When the Rising Sons fell apart, Taj Mahal went on to win a cult following with solo albums like The Natch'l Blues and Giant Step, and was now helped by publicity from the Rolling Stones, who invited him to play alongside themselves, John Lennon, Eric Clapton and The Who in their Rock'n'Roll Circus in 1968. "That was fantastic. They completely opened the whole thing up to us, and they were real people."
For him, the Stones were clearly true blues enthusiasts, unlike many American bands. He said that they, along with other English blues-influenced bands of the era, were special "because they jumped over the Elvis syndrome and went right to the doorstep of the real players - and learned one-on-one from what they were hearing". He congratulated Brian Jones and Bill Wyman for "listening outside their experience", with special praise for Jones for recording in Morocco with the hereditary musicians in Jajouka, and so becoming arguably the first British rock star to take an active interest in Africa.
As for what happens next, Taj Mahal is open to suggestions. It's possible that he'll get together again with the Hula Blues, the band that resulted from the 15 years he spent living in Hawaii before moving to California. Then again, if it hadn't been for a clash of schedules, he had hoped to re-explore his Caribbean roots by touring alongside the British poet Linton Kwesi Johnson: "I'm sure something would have happened. We would have connected."
Before any of that takes place, Taj Mahal is playing an 11-date tour with his trio this month, and on most of the shows he will be appearing alongside yet another fine Malian guitarist, the lilting and, at times, blues-influenced Idrissa Soumaoro. So will he be involved in yet another African collaboration, this time with Soumaoro, who he has yet to meet? "We'll see what happens. I'm open. It's just another song down the road."
· Taj Mahal plays the Anvil, Basingstoke (box office: 01256 844244), on Sunday, then tours.
|
|
|
| Saint Sway |
thanks for posting that. Cool to see the Stones mentions.
I caught Taj live at the Blue Note in NYC a few weeks ago. He's still great. Hasnt lost a thing. Just a wonderful talent.
did great versions of Corrina, Blues With A Feeling. And closed with Lovin In My Babys Eyes. |
|
|
| FPM C10 |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
thanks for posting that. Cool to see the Stones mentions.
I caught Taj live at the Blue Note in NYC a few weeks ago. He's still great. Hasnt lost a thing. Just a wonderful talent.
did great versions of Corrina, Blues With A Feeling. And closed with Lovin In My Babys Eyes.
Funny...I listened to him doing "Corrina" with the Stones this morning on the way to work. First time I've listened to that album in a long time.
Guys like Taj just improve with age.
|
|
|
| lonecrapshooter |
I also saw Taj Mahal at the Blue Note in NYC. He was awesome. His guitar guy told me Taj will in Philly when the Stones are and they hope he will play with the Stones there. |
|
