Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal (b. May 17th, 1940)
a.k.a. Henry St. Clair Fredericks

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FABLES OF A RECONSTRUCTION

Taj Mahal's Latest Collaboration Is a Family Affair
Over a 40-year, Grammy-studded career, Taj Mahal has pursued ever deeper the connections between his music and the world around him. KULANJAN, his latest album with Mali's kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate and a six-piece West African ensemble, is perhaps the culmination of his efforts. Embracing ancient musical styles, Taj uses his distinctive, finger-picked steel guitar lines to transcend time, reimagining the primeval musical encounter between Africans and the New World. From the Athens, Georgia, studio where KULANJAN was born, Taj Mahal and his guests reconnect African-American song (and all that has come after) with its deepest roots an ocean away. The blues legend took time out before hitting the road with the Africa Fete tour to address the implications of this profound summit.

barnesandnoble.com: This must have been an amazing experience for you.

Taj Mahal: Well, it wasn't like it was something I hadn't been pointed at for years. It was certainly a thought in my head to get together with the musicians who had this parent tradition, undisturbed as it was for so long, since 1235 A.D.

bn: You've known Toumani Diabate almost a decade. How did you meet?

TM: Just ending up on the same kinda shows. By the time I'd met him, I was certainly ten or 15 years with the knowledge of the kora, the instrument he plays. Style-wise you can hear what he's doing -- the more you play with it, and you take certain songs from the great Afro-American songbook, and you place them in that context; it really works.

bn: How much of KULANJAN is recreating the history of the earliest Africans in America, and how much is creating it?

TM: Well, there's not too much recreating. What you have is a parent tradition that hasn't had any connection with the music from here in over 500 years. Then on this side, you have a culture that doesn't have much respect for anything that's over two minutes old. There have been some people over the years who've tried to reestablish the connection with the older traditional music and have made some inroads. My thing has been being involved in the music from an older time in this country; just because if it worked then, it can work now when we really need it.

bn: Need it in what way?

TM: Just in what music means to people in a fuller, broader sense. I'm listening to Dr. Joyce Brothers on TV saying how music is so soothing, and does this and that, I'm thinking, "Am I hearing people in the most advanced country on earth just now discovering what the value of music is?" We have a huge music industry here, why don't we ever make use of that, instead of firing the most violent and vile music toward the masses? Why not make friends, make connections, instead of just making money?

bn: Do Africans have a different appreciation for music?

TM: Yeah, man. Toumani Diabate is the 72nd generation doing what he does. There is nothing in the United States, except maybe a few sequoias or giant redwoods, that has anything like that. You talk to kids today, and you say Martin Luther King and they say, "Huh?" They have no memory. Africans, they can be musicians, but they're also farmers, doctors...Here, music, art, dance -- it's all held suspect unless someone can make money off of it.

bn: How do you see the African contribution to American music?

TM: There would be no music scene whatsoever had it not been for Africans brought into the West. I believe Miriam Makeba when she says, "What we gave to the world is rhythm, and joy in song." It just didn't exist that way before. You have to go back and realize the African presence in music has changed even how people perceive rhythm.

bn: Was being down South inspirational to the record?

TM: Nah, it wasn't like that. It's not like I'm some chocolate-covered white guy. I'm a black man who's been several generations aware of his African-ness, and integrated it into modern times. Here's an opportunity to communicate with my ancestors on a different level than it usually happens in the United States. This is totally different. This is family; this is ancestral stuff. But fortunately, now there are enough people who might be interested in hearing what that sounds like. It's time that this country wakes up and realizes that it's not the only game on the planet.

bn: There aren't many world-music albums that connect American music with the rest of the world.

TM: That's how people perceive it, because that's how they're taught. I was taught to see my African ancestors as connected to me, not to see myself disconnected from them. I'm just learning that it's difficult for Americans to see that. People are always saying, "the mercurial Taj Mahal, playing music from the Caribbean, this and that." They don't see the connection.

bn: Was there a particular reason for working with these Malian traditions?

TM: No. We wanted to do what worked. And it wasn't difficult. From the front, it took right off. [The connection between African music and blues] is so deep that people here don't recognize it. You listen to "Catfish Blues." That's what I call the Bentonia, Mississippi, sound, whose leading exponent was Skip James -- that kind of long, low tone, that way swamp sound. And it wasn't like these guys [the Africans] didn't know what to do, or what was going on. They just flowed right with it.

Mark Schwartz