Photo credit: Jay Blakesberg / Retna LTD

By Paul Freeman [2012 Interview]

“Music is a language. The language of our universe, our galaxy, our solar system. Our intercontinental language here on the planet Earth, is music.”

So sayeth Taj Mahal, Grammy-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist.

Taj emerged onto the Earth on May 17, 1942, in Harlem. Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr., he grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. His mother sang in a gospel choir. His father was a West Indian jazz arranger/pianist. Taj has always drawn from global music.

For years, he has been considered one of the leading modern proponents of the blues. With Ry Cooder, Taj formed Rising Stars in 1965. At the Whisky a Go Go, they performed with such legends as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy. By 1968, Taj had established himself as an important solo artist.

Taj Mahal, who, when not touring, spends much of his time in Northern California, has delved deeply into African music, as well as Jamaican/Caribbean/reggae. But he has always welcomed new types of musical projects, ranging from writing film music to forming a hula band. He plays what he thinks his own audience will enjoy, not aiming at mass appeal. Perhaps that’s the key to his longevity.

Nearing age 70, Taj Mahal’s light shines as brightly as ever.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Do the sets vary each night?

TAJ MAHAL:
Yeah, we have a tremendous amount of material. And we just start somewhere and end somewhere [Laughs]. There’s stuff that people do like. And you want to make sure that they get to hear some of those things, too. It’s all taste.

PCC:
I had read that you prefer outdoor performances.

TAJ MAHAL:
Well, everybody’s connected to the sky. And you wan to really reach that high in the music that you’re playing. Those old music halls used to give you a feeling that you were connected to the sky. And in festival-type shows, you’re pulling on a lot more energy in that circumstance. Mostly, I just want to hear the music sounding good, whatever the venue.

PCC:
You draw from so many styles of music. Does that make it easy for you to fit on all sorts of bills?

TAJ MAHAL:
I think we need to take the spyglass of anthropology and turn it around the other way and realize that the majority of music that’s popular in the world is based on African music. And these are all related subjects. That’s all. Cousins, aunts, uncles, second, third, fourth-cousins, cousins by marriage, sister-in-laws, mother-in-laws. That’s what the music is. I sort of see it as family.

My stepfather was Jamaican. My father was from the Caribbean. My mother was a Southerner. We were raised here in the United States with our cultural heritage coming in from all over the world. That’s how it looks to me. Some people think like I’m American and then I go down to Trinidad and hear Trinidadian music and I come running back and go into the studio and try to do it like that. No, it’s not like that at all. That music was bouncing in my life from the time I was a kid.

One of the important languages in music is the blues. You have to settle with that. And I settled with it really well, I think. Once I got really good with that, I moved to have the blues represent itself with all these other musics, all these other relatives. Go and introduce yourself [Chuckles]. And then consequently, introduce it to the people who like the music that I play. I think that’s what’s happening.

Maybe there’s something to it, people saying I’m the father of world music, in terms of making people aware of it, not that it wasn’t out there, not that it didn’t exist itself, not that it didn’t have its own personality, but as far as maybe being the first American artist that really stepped out and said, ‘Hey, we need to talk about this.’

PCC:
Did you always just have a great curiosity about music and an open mind, an open ear?

TAJ MAHAL:
Sure, sure, sure. It was always that way. I didn’t even know that was curiosity. If you had one set of grandparents that speak in the South Carolinian, Southern language, and the other ones speak in Caribbean lilt, you’ve got music. Those are musics. Music is a language. The language of our universe, our galaxy, our solar system and our intercontinental language here on the planet Earth, is music. No matter where you go, if you don’t know what the language is, when the popular song of the day plays, you hear it. And if you hear it a few times, you go, ‘My God, they’re playing that all over the place. I heard that in Budapest. And Rome. And I heard it again in Sicily. I heard it in Scandinavia. And my God, they were playing it all the way in Belgium.’

I can’t walk into a restaurant and not hear the music, as I’m walking in. I’m always amazed. I’m sitting there, watching people, they’re talking, not even aware of the music. I’m 24/7, 365, for 60, 70 years now, all about music.

PCC:
How much of that comes from having, as a child, absorbed music from your parents?

TAJ MAHAL:
I’m sure that was a big factor. They gave me the keys to the kingdom [Laughs].

PCC:
As far as the blues itself, what do you see as being the most vital aspects that turn up in other forms - is it the emotion, the rhythms, just the progressions?

TAJ MAHAL:
Well, I just have to go back to the African roots again. If you want to dance, if you want to move, you want to shake, you’re going to have to consider some African music. It’s been that way for thousands of years.

PCC:
Is it true you got the name Taj Mahal from dreams?

TAJ MAHAL:
I feel like I’m in a petri dish and you’re looking at me through a microscope. I think what blows people’s minds about that is, given the lousy education system in this world, how did this guy have a global concept before the internet? [Laughs] Well, you just get out there and go for it. Yeah, if you’re educated, there are a lot of options. And even time travel, you can reach. Encyclopedias. You can look at maps. I came through in the sixties, when there was a tremendous amount of information. I was in my early twenties, when the sixties came around. I was about 20 in 1962. And by the time it started heating up towards the end of the decade, I was like 26, 27, 28. So there was a lot of information coming through back in those days. Yeah, tremendous.

PCC:
And a lot of experimentation.

TAJ MAHAL:
Exactly. A lot of people were doing a lot of stuff. Fortunately for me, I was a few years older then, so I was like, ‘Hmm, doesn’t look like that’s the way to go up.’ A lot of them, they had to go up that ladder. You couldn’t tell them they couldn’t go there. Fortunately, some of them made it back.

PCC:
But there was a lot of experimentation in music, too.

TAJ MAHAL:
Yeah, but that was always going on. That happened with jazz. You’ve got to take the music somewhere. That’s my job.

But getting up to play, we like to see people dance. The hardest thing for us to do is to play to a sit-down audience. That really is hard, more than anything else, when people can’t dance. I literally have to close my eyes and not look at the audience.

PCC:
They’ll be dancing in their chairs.

TAJ MAHAL:
Well, see, what it is, they really don’t know church dancing. Church dancing is like, you can’t get up and move, but you can certainly move in your chair and let people know that you’re being moved by it.

PCC:
You’ve played with so many people, written for films, had the hula band, are you always seeking new challenges?

TAJ MAHAL:
No, because they come by and they visit me. I don’t know if I go looking for them as much as I’ve been lucky. You know, if you get out of your own way, big fish come by [Chuckles], especially if you’re fishing all the time. You’ve got to have a lure, got to have some bait in the water. You’ve got to know what they want, what’s going to make them bite.

There’s a classic line. Michael Jackson is talking to Quincy Jones. And Michael is saying, ‘Quincy, we have to record this song.’ Quincy said, ‘I know you’re excited about it, but why do we have to record it?’ Michael says, ‘If we don’t record this song, God’s going to take it down the street and give it to Prince.’ [Laughs] You just have to be open... all day. And that’s what I’m doing.

PCC:
What intrigued me with the dream connection to your name, I was wondering how much you tend to tap into the whole spiritual nature of music.

TAJ MAHAL:
Oh, yeah, always. You kidding me? Yeah, the dream state, that was big when I was a kid. My parents, particularly my mother, she used to have a whole lot of stuff that was like dreams, superstition, spirituality. She was on that team, real good,. And, you know, it just becomes a part of your life. You don’t even know it. So yeah, dreams are heavy.

PCC:
In the course of traveling the world, do you find differences and similarities in terms of what the music means to people and how they apply it to their lives?

TAJ MAHAL:
Yeah. Mostly similarities. There are differences in what types of instruments. Some places, it’s more traditionally connected to who these people are. Other places, it’s more spiritually connected. Some places, it’s spiritual and traditional.

What happened here in the United States, post-slavery, bringing Africans to the United Sates totally deconstructed the family culture and the cultural background, the music that was kept in the family. But in that deconstruction and dissemination in the United States, it created a brand new music, which goes out to the world. You want to play pop music and you’re in the former Yugoslavia, you’re going to have to listen to some people that come from the United States. I don’t care how good you’re playing, you’re going to want to find somebody from over here. Even if it’s the heavy metal guys that come from over here, you’re going to listen to them. And no matter what they’re playing, until they really come up with a brand new music, they’re just playing bad blues. Loud, bad, unrhythmic blues.

And every now and then, you hear some guy who’s got some brilliant stuff Like Jimi Hendrix, who managed to completely change the music. And that’s where I am right now. I’m on the Hendrix Experience tour, playing every night with a lot of different people. It’s really exciting.

PCC:
Is is surprising, that Hendrix still has such an impact on young people?

TAJ MAHAL:
No, not at all. There ain’t gonna be another one of him. Never. Whatever it is that’s coming next, that’s going to be incredible, it will not be Jimi Hendrix. He will still always be who he is and what he is, where he is, doing what he’s doing, creating what he’s creating. That guy was creative. It’s just phenomenal when you hear a whole bunch of guys playing his music every night. And listening to it, playing it with different instruments. Big steel guitars. Steel Stratocasters. Maestros. All kinds of stuff happening out here, man. Phenomenal. The music’s just great.

PCC:
And your own music, is it just a matter of pleasing yourself?

TAJ MAHAL:
Yeah. And it’s what I think people will really enjoy. You can’t sustain, going out there and trying to play the hit game. I never played the hit game. I always thought I had music that the record company would realize that there was a big enough audience out there for it. Obviously, they didn’t. I still have an audience. I would not want to be a young musician trying to get started today, because it’s just impossible, damn near impossible to do anything.

The business is all on the top end now. And it’s all sewn up around there. It used to be you could play from town to town, city to city, state to state, area to area. Now everything is going on inside of the computer. Everybody sounds the same. Even when the new kids come out, every once in a while, they get like one, two hot albums, then they fall off.

PCC:
What’s been the key to your longevity? Just always finding new aspects of music to explore?

TAJ MAHAL:
Yeah. And it’s connecting with the audience, like I did 45 years ago. And playing soulful, meaningful music every night. It they come to a show and haven’t seen me in 20 years, they go, ‘Wow, this guy’s gotten really good.’ It’s like they come in expecting some old blues man. I’m contemporary. I know what’s going on with the music. I know what’s happening with contemporary music. I always did.

But I just think it’s necessary to chant up the ancestors. Call up the spirit of the ancestors and keep that happening in the present tense.

PCC:
Where are you based now?

TAJ MAHAL:
I’m kind of anywhere I want to be, actually. I keep a couple of places. But most of the time when I’m off the road, I hang out on the West Coast. Hanging around the Bay Area.

PCC:
Married at this point?

TAJ MAHAL:
Hmm, nah. No.

PCC:
How many kids do you have?

TAJ MAHAL:
Eleven kids.

PCC:
Did any go into music?

TAJ MAHAL:
Oh, yeah, musicians, performance artists, poets, dancers. Yeah, a lot of stuff, landscape architects, drummers.

PCC:
Did you try to make sure they included creativity in their lives?

TAJ MAHAL:
No. No, no. They find their own way. They either are or they aren’t. Some people selfishly want their children to travel in their footsteps. Kids get twisted up like that. My kids don’t climb out from my shadow, because I don’t cast a shadow. I cast light. And when you cast light, your kids stand in your light. And they learn to cast light. It’s a very important concept. Kids have to find their own light.

PCC:
What have been the biggest satisfactions for you, what have been the biggest challenges, over the course of your career?

TAJ MAHAL:
I don’t know... I’m still doing it. [Laughs] No, the way I work, I haven’t really sat around. I mean we did write a book at one point. And probably will do some more stuff like that. But I haven’t sat around and gathered it all. Someone just starting out would go, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.’

PCC:
Do you tend to want to look ahead, rather than back at what you’ve done?

TAJ MAHAL:
Well, what I do is, I’m very thankful for the opportunity to be a feel-good musician in this time and be connected to a lot of stuff. It’s ongoing. It’s in progress and in motion. It’s very exciting.

My audience is wonderful. I’ve got three, four generations of people coming out to listen to the music. I’ve got really dedicated fans. It’s just exciting, man, to see all these wonderful people come by, to have a good time at the show, year after year after year.

PCC:
Are there still goals to accomplish?

TAJ MAHAL:
Oh, sure. Always. Not even goals. More music to play. I don’t see it as goals. You just want to get to playing it. I spend half as much time on the road as I used to. At the peak time, it was probably about 300 days and almost as many concerts. We were crazy back in those days. Today, you have to do it in a different way. There are a lot of places would love to have us come and teach, do this and do that. I don’t know if I want to go that way. There’s lots of stuff still to be recorded. Symphonic stuff. Other kinds of stuff.

PCC:
Sounds like the possibilities are still infinite.

TAJ MAHAL:
Oh, yeah. If you tie it to the money cycle, though, you’ll never get nothin’ done. If you tie it to the spiritual cycle, you get a lot of stuff done. And it’s a much more pleasant trip.

For the latest Taj Mahal news and tour dates, visit www.tajblues.com.