 Artist: Taj Mahal: mp3 download Genre(s): Pop Blues Discography:  Etta Baker With Taj Mahal Year: 2004 Tracks: 19  The Natch'l Blues Year: 2000 Tracks: 9  Shoutin' In Key Year: 2000 Tracks: 13  Dancing The Blues Year: 1993 Tracks: 13  Giant Step/De ole folks at home Year: 1969 Tracks: 22  World Music Year: Tracks: 14  The Real Thing Year: Tracks: 11  PHANTOM BLUES Year: Tracks: 14  Like Never Before Year: Tracks: 11  Blue Light Boogie Year: Tracks: 12 One of the most big figures in tardy 20th c vapors, Taj Mahal played an enormous role in renewing and preserving traditional acoustic blues. Not content to stay inside that realm, Mahal soon broadened his approach, pickings a musicologist's interest group in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the populace -- reggae and other Caribbean sept, jazz, evangel, R&B, zydeco, respective West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived inheritance of about of those forms allowed Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a orbicular linear perspective and to present the blues as share of a wider musical context. Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed likewise far from his mellow country blues foundation garment. Blues purists naturally didn't have much use for Mahal's music and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still, Mahal's concept seemed reasonably cleared in the '90s, when a cadre of loretta Young bluesmen began to follow his lead -- both acoustic revivalists (Keb' Mo', Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart). Taj Mahal was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents -- his father a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican declension, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina world Health Organization american ginseng evangel -- affected to Springfield, MA, when he was quite young and while growing up there, he much listened to medicine from around the world on his father's short wave wireless. He particularly loved the blues -- both acoustic and electric -- and former rock candy & rollers care Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While perusing agriculture and creature husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adoptive the melodic assumed name Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed Taj Mahal & the Elektras, which played around the area during the early '60s. After graduating, Mahal affected to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after fashioning his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitar player Ry Cooder. The mathematical group sign-language to Columbia and released 1 single, only the label didn't quite experience what to establish of their innovative blend of Americana, which awaited a number of roots rock fusions that would contract form in the next few days; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992. Thwarted, Mahal left wing the grouping and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo creative person. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped approach to time of origin blue devils sounds made it dissimilar virtually anything else on the vapors scenery at the clip. It came to be regarded as a hellenic of the '60s megrims revitalisation, as did its follow-up, Natch'l Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969 and taken together, those trinity records built Mahal's report as an veritable yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide-cut exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety show of salient rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s, Mahal's musical venturesomeness began to convey hold; 1971's Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his captivation with Caribbean rhythms and the next year's double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored sousaphone section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal ramate out into pic soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy picnic, Mo' Roots. Mahal continued to track record for Columbia through 1976, upon which head he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the cinema Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahal's work and he worn-out much of the '80s turned record, eventually moving to Hawaii to absorb himself in some other musical custom. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following class, he inaugurated a drawstring of successful, well-received children's albums with Shake up Sugaree. The next few eld brought a variety of side projects, including a musical scotch for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nominating address in 1991. The same year marked Mahal's fully fledged recall to unconstipated recording and touring, kicked off with the number one of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Care Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Saltation the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more stone, pour down, and R&B-flavored soil; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a bit of small-label face projects that established some of his well-nigh challenging forays into reality music. 1995's Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with classical Indian musicians; 1998's Sacred Island was recorded with his new Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater astuteness; 1999's Kulanjan was a duet performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate. |
Don Sugarcane Harris
