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A towering master of blues, Taj Mahal was just nominated for a Grammy Award for his collaboration with Gregg Allman on a live version of the classic “Statesboro Blues,” featured on the album “All My Friends: Celebrating the Songs & Voice of Gregg Allman.”
A few months earlier, the legendary Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, film composer and multi-instrumentalist was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Nashville.
“Taj Mahal was world music before there was such a thing,” Keb’ Mo’ proclaimed, introducing his hero at the ceremony.
“I’ve been performing for over 50 years, and to be recognized for the road I’ve traveled means the world to me,” says Mahal, who describes the award as “one of the most powerful and wonderful things that could ever happen in my life.”
Drawing from a rich heritage and a vast catalogue of styles, Mahal has delighted audiences with a vibrant musical gumbo that embraces jazz, reggae, calypso, African, folk, rock, Hawaiian and, of course, the many rhythms of blues, for more than five decades.
Sparking audiences, encouraging them to move and sing along, all comes naturally to this consummate musician, who will be a headliner at the third annual Uncle Willie K BBQ Blues Fest on Saturday at the War Memorial Complex special events field in Wailuku. The festival also features ZZ Top’s Billy F Gibbons, Pat Simmons, Mick Fleetwood and Maui’s musical virtuoso Willie K, who recently performed with Steven Tyler and Michael McDonald at the Wailea Beach Marriott Resort & Spa.
Since the mid-1960s, Mahal has played a vital role in the preservation of traditional blues and African-American roots music. Keenly knowledgeable, he creates with a grand palette, forming authentic, rootsy compositions that, while remaining true to tradition, manage to sound uniquely his own.
And, unlike all but a handful of veteran musicians, he gets better with age. Just in the last few years, he’s been featured on a spectrum of recordings including tributes to John Lennon (performing “Come Together”) and Bob Dylan (playing “115th Dream” on the Amnesty International benefit album “Chimes of Freedom”). He was a guest on rocker Sammy Hagar’s “Sammy Hagar & Friends” album, he teamed with gospel greats the Blind Boys of Alabama for “Talking Christmas,” and joined reggae legend Toots Hibbert for the classic “Reggae Got Soul” on the peace project “Playing For Change 3: Songs Around The World.”
“I just get in there and do what I can, everywhere I can,” he says. “I’m always busy.”
When Eric Clapton and jazz star Wynton Marsalis teamed for a historic concert at New York’s Lincoln Center in 2011, they invited Mahal along to open the show and join the duo on a couple of tunes.
“It was exciting,” he says. “I know Eric from a long time ago in the late ’60s when I opened for him, and we did the Rolling Stones’ ‘Rock and Roll Circus.’ I love everything Eric does.”
Clapton and the American blues master have collaborated on a number of recordings including Mahal’s “Phantom Blues” album, and Clapton and JJ Cale’s Grammy-winning “The Road to Escondido.”
In 2013, Clapton’s album “Old Sock” featured friends like Paul McCartney and Steve Winwood, and it opened with Mahal’s “Further on Down the Road.” “I went down and put some harmonica and that secret ingredient in there,” he reports.
That same year, he was invited to perform with the Rolling Stones in Chicago on their “50 & Counting” tour.
The oldest of nine children, Mahal was born in Harlem in 1942 to a gospel-singing mother and a Caribbean-born father who was a big jazz fan. From his earliest days, Mahal was immersed in the music that would become his career.
“I inherited the whole Caribbean way of looking at the world,” he recalls. “Music was a huge part of our communication. People came over on Saturday night and brought their records with them, and it was turn up the hi-fi, roll back the rug and cut a few holes in the floor. Music has always been this incredible thing.”
A passion for the blues began while attending the University of Massachusetts, and he spent time searching out the living masters of the tradition. This love led him to study an array of instruments including electric and acoustic guitars, bass, piano, banjo, dulcimer, mandolin, harmonica and flute.
Moving to Los Angeles after graduating, he co-founded a group with fellow blues aficionado Ry Cooder called the Rising Sons, and recorded his first solo album in 1968.
At the close of that year, Mahal flew to England to join the Rolling Stones, the Who, Lennon and Clapton to film “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” which was only released publicly in 1996.
“I made a connection with Mick Jagger and the Stones in the early years of them coming to the United States,” he explains. “It all started with a conversation between Mick and I about, what have you guys got in the drinking water in England? I loved how the kids in the U.K. glommed on to the real players. They jumped over the Elvis syndrome that kind of stunted the American growth, where people were willing to take the substitute, whereas these guys landed on Elmore James’ doorstep. The Yardbirds had been working with Sonny Boy Williamson, the Stones had been working with Howlin’ Wolf. They championed the real innovators of music, and the result of what they learned was a much more powerful music.
“Mick said, ‘If there’s anything we can ever help you out with, please get in touch.’ Three months later, they asked us over for the Rock and Roll Circus. It was our first time in Europe and very exciting.”
Over the span of 40-plus albums, Mahal has enthusiastically expanded his musical vocabulary. Ever experimental, in the early 1970s he released a live album based around a tuba section, and in the mid-’90s he recorded the superb “Mumtaz Mahal” with classical Indian guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. At the close of the last century, he teamed with a group of African musicians from Mali led by kora player Toumani Diabate for the primal blues of “Kulanjan,” and in 2005, he released “Muktano” with the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of his career, he released the Grammy-nominated album “Maestro,” where the veteran bluesman was joined by Ziggy Marley, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Los Lobos and Angelique Kidjo.
As a longtime admirer of Hawaiian music, Mahal, while living on Kauai, formed the Hula Blues Band. This venture produced two great albums, “Sacred Island” and “Hanapepe Dream,” a soulful Caribbean/bluesy/Hawaiian stew accented with steel guitar, slack-key guitar and ukulele on such highlights as the classic “Stagger Lee” and Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”
“I heard the music (Hawaiian) as a youngster, but so much of what they played was almost cartoonish,” he explains. “I was lucky enough to hear some real stuff on ‘Hawaii Calls.’ I remember hearing this music one night on the radio and my brain went wow, I hope I get to travel one day and see who those people are. The music was so pleasing. I felt like one of the luckiest people in the world to have spent time there and to get to know the music and musicians.”
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Acclaimed guitarist Harry Manx also performs on Saturday, bringing his “Om Suite Ohm” Aloha Tour to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s McCoy Studio Theater. A former student of Indian virtuoso guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Manx bridges blues and Hindustani classical music, playing a Mohan Veena sitar/guitar, lap steel, harmonica, stomp box and banjo.
“Who else could cover songs by George Gershwin, Bruce Springsteen, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix, and make them all sound like they were written by the same person,” marveled a Sydney Morning Herald review.
And on seeing Manx perform “I’m On Fire” at New York’s International Guitar Festival, Springsteen reported: “Watching Harry play, I feel like I learned something new.”
Tickets are $35 and $40, and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or by visiting www.mauiarts.org.