Taj Mahal
Wednesday 28 August @ 10:02:14 |
 by Andrew Ewell
For nearly forty years Taj Mahal has been considered by critics and musicians to be one of the greatest living links to the blues tradition. In the late 1960s, when artists like Paul Butterfield and Eric Clapton helped popularize post-war era Chicago blues by performing the songs of urban bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Taj Mahal took a different route. Paying tribute to musicians like Mississippi John Hurt and Sleepy John Estes, Taj Mahal soon became the most respected and popular heir to the country blues tradition. But when he takes the stage with his band this Sunday at the Minnesota Zoo, it will not be as an aging bluesman recapturing his past, as an anachronistic troubadour from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, or as a nostalgia-peddler of any sort. Taj Mahal’s music is at once traditional and progressive, and he manages to pay homage, on album and in performance, to his predecessors while simultaneously expanding the range of what we call ‘the blues.’
Throughout his prolific career Taj Mahal has devoted himself to exploring all the facets of American music, including West African, Caribbean, country, R&B, and soul. On his 36 albums Taj Mahal has managed to honor these many roots without, at any time, sounding trite, hackneyed, or derivative. His music is, to put it as simply as possible, eclectic.
Raised by his mother, a gospel singer, and his father, a Jamaican-born composer and musician, Taj Mahal had an early appreciation for diverse musical traditions, which he has fostered and cultivated throughout his life. Since he began performing country, blues, and rock with Ry Cooder in the mid-60s, he has ventured into nearly every genre imaginable. He wrote a Grammy-nominated score for the Broadway show, Mule Bone, which was based on a Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston script. He collaborated with Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate on the 1999 release, Kulanjan. With the Hula Blues Band he recorded a Hawaiian-blues album in 1998 entitled , Sacred Island. He has also written children’s albums, movie scores, and been nominated for five other Grammy awards, winning one in 1997 and one in 2000.
He recently released a long-awaited live album featuring his band from the Grammy-nominated Phantom Blues (1996) and the Grammy-winner, Senior Blues (1997). At first glance, the track listing of Shoutin’ In Key: Taj Mahal & The Phantom Blues Band Live, might seem somewhat ill-formed. The band leaps from Louisiana to Detroit, from the Caribbean to Chicago, in the course of thirteen songs. But this highly acclaimed album—it earned a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Blues Album of 2000—is so well-crafted, executed, and inspired, that it’s not difficult to understand, when listening to it, how Taj Mahal has earned the esteem and praise of critics, fans, and musicians alike.
Shoutin’ In Key features everything from the Percy Mayfield classic, “Stranger In My Own Home Town,” to the Spanish-titled, “Sentidos Dulce,” to the Caribbean number, “Rain From the Sky.” It is an album for blues traditionalists and rock, reggae, country, and soul fans. Taj Mahal’s performance this Sunday at the Minnesota Zoo will no doubt cover similar territory, and will be infused with the kind of charm, enthusiasm, wit, spontaneity, and virtuosity that can come only from such a preeminent musician, whose peak continues to rise. Flawlessly weaving together the multifarious threads of American music, Taj Mahal is one of a select few artists who can truly be called a living legend.
Taj Mahal performs with The Phantom Blues Band this Sunday, September 1, at the Minnesota Zoo’s Weesner Family Amphitheater. 7:30. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased online at uptowntix.com or by phone at 612-604-4466. For more infor mation, see the zoo’s Web site at www.mnzoo.com.
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