Taj Mahal Comes to Yoshi's on Fillmore

This Sunday night, I'll be enjoying my birthday dinner at the new Yoshi's on Fillmore, seeing one of the greatest musicians of al time, the incredible Taj Mahal and his Phantom Blues Band. Taj has been playing his own distinctive brand of music -- variously described as Afro-Caribbean blues, folk-world-blues, hula blues, folk-funk, and a host of other hyphenations -- for more than 40 years. Caribbean, Hawaiian, African, Latin, and Cuban sounds and rhythms mix with folk, jazz, zydeco, gospel, rock, pop, soul, and R&B, all layered on top of a solid country blues foundation.

What ties it all together is Taj's abiding interest in musical discovery, particularly in tracing many American musical forms back to their roots in Africa and Europe. Following his passion, Taj has spent time in the Caribbean, West Africa, Hawaii, Europe, the South Pacific, Australia, South America, and all over the continental U.S. His music reflects his global perspective, incorporating sounds from everywhere he's lived and traveled.

A self-taught musician, Taj plays more than 20 instruments, including the National Steel and Dobro guitars. His remarkable voice ranges from gruff and gravelly to smooth and sultry. Now with his own independent label, Kandu Records, Taj plans to help other musicians the way other independents have helped him. "I'll be working with some young contemporary people to get their work out there. I might like to produce some people in the not-so-distant future."

The Phantom Blues Band was formed as a studio band to backup Taj Mahal on his CD, 'Dancin' the Blues'. Having spent many years as part of the Texas blues community, the members of the Phantom Blues Band backed and recorded with many Texas blues greats including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Albert Collins and Chicago legends Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. The Phantom Blues Band members are all in their own right successful session players, producers, arrangers, composers, songwriters and recording artists. After circling the globe playing major Blues and Jazz Festivals in Europe, Japan and Australia with Taj Mahal, The Phantom Blues Band released their first CD, 'Limited Edition' in 2003.

Taj credits much of his success to the freedom that independent record companies have given him later in his career. Too often, he says, big record companies try to put artists in a box musically. "There is a lot of music that people do not get to hear, and it's unfortunate. It's because of marketing and the fact that somebody [at the record company] says you won't like this. But the people who come hear me get to hear everything I know about."

Born Henry St. Claire Fredericks in Harlem on May 17, 1942, Taj grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Caribbean descent, and his mother, a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina, encouraged their children to respect and be proud of their roots. His father had an extensive record collection and a short-wave radio that brought sounds from near and far to Taj’s ears. His parents also started him on classical piano lessons, but after two weeks, he says, "it was already clear I had my own concept of how I wanted to play." The lessons stopped, but Taj didn't.

In addition to piano, the young musician learned to play the clarinet, trombone and harmonica, and he loved to sing. He discovered his step-father’s guitar and became serious about it in his early teens when Lynnwood Perry, an accomplished young guitarist from North Carolina, moved in next door. Perry was an expert in the Piedmont style of playing, but he could also play like Muddy Waters, Lightin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed. Taj was inspired to begin playing guitar in earnest.

Springfield in the '50s was full of recent arrivals, both from abroad and from elsewhere in the U.S. "We spoke several dialects in my house -- Southern, Caribbean, African -- and we heard dialects from eastern and western Europe," says Taj. In addition, musicians from the Caribbean, Africa, and all over the U.S. frequently visited the Fredericks household. Taj became even more fascinated with roots -- where all the different forms of music he was hearing came from, what path they took to get to their current states, how they influenced each other on the way. He threw himself into the study of older forms of African-American music, music the record companies largely ignored.

While attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as an agriculture student in the early 1960s, the musician transformed himself into Taj Mahal, an idea that came to him in a dream. He began playing with the popular U. Mass. party band The Elektras, then left Massachusetts in 1964 for the blues-heavy L.A. club scene. There he formed The Rising Sons with Ry Cooder, Ed Cassidy, Jesse Lee Kinkaid, Gary Marker, and Kevin Kelly. At the Whiskey A Go Go in Los Angeles, The Rising Sons opened for Otis Redding, Sam the Sham, The Temptations, and Martha and the Vandellas at The Trip. Taj also had the opportunity to hear, meet, and play with such blues legends as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Louis and Dave Meyers, Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel, Lightin' Hopkins, Bessie Jones, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, and Hammy Nixon.

Taj tapped these experiences on three hugely influential records: Taj Mahal (1967), The Natch'l Blues (1968), and Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home (1969). Drawing on all the musical forms he'd absorbed as a child, these early albums showed signs of the musical exploration that would be Taj's hallmark over the years to come.

"I didn't want to fall into the trap of complacency", says Taj. "I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean. I wanted to explore the connections between different kinds of music."

In 1970, Taj traveled to Spain to have a well-deserved rest and vacation in the home of the Guitar. He carved out his own musical niche with a string of adventurous recordings throughout the '70s, including Happy to Be Just Like I Am (1971), Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff (1972), the Grammy-nominated soundtrack to the movie Sounder (1973), Mo' Roots (1974), Music Fuh Ya' (Music Para Tu) (1977), and Evolution (The Most Recent) (1978).

Taj's recorded output slowed considerably during the 1980s as he toured relentlessly and immersed himself in the music and culture of his new home in Hawaii. Still, that decade saw the well-received Taj (1987) as well as the first three of his celebrated children's albums. He returned to a full recording and touring schedule in the 1990s, including such projects as the musical scores for the Lanston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone (1991) and the movie Zebrahead (1992). Later in the decade, Dancing the Blues (1993), Phantom Blues (1996), An Evening of Acoustic Music (1996) and the Grammy Award-winning Señor Blues (1997) were both commercial and critical successes.

At the same time, Taj continued to explore world music, beginning with the aptly named World Music in 1993. He joined Indian classical musicians on Mumtaz Mahal in 1995, recorded Sacred Island, a blend of Hawaiian music and blues, with The Hula Blues in 1998, and paired with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate for Kulanjan in 1999.

Since 2000, Taj has released a second Grammy-winning album, Shoutin' in Key (2000) and recorded a second album with The Hula Blues (2003's lush Hanapepe Dream). "I walk with the energy of music every day. I don't have to turn it on to hear it play."

While Taj's music has always been well received, popular culture finally caught up to him the '90s and 2000s. Taj walked away with the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for 1997's Señor Blues and again for 2000's Shoutin' in Key, both recorded with The Phantom Blues Band. He has garnered nine Grammy nominations in all.

After more than a decade of playing with larger ensembles, Taj wanted to do more guitar playing with a smaller group. In addition to The Phantom Blues band, Taj tours with The Taj Mahal Trio – just Taj on guitar, piano, and banjo, Bill Rich on bass and Kester Smith on drums. These musicians have been playing together on and off for more than 30 years. Together, they draw on a long, shared history of Taj's music.

The Trio allows the music between voice and guitar to happen with the smallest amount of accompaniment – bass and drums," says Taj. "That leaves a lot of space to be filled. The guitar is not submerged but right up front in the music. It's a challenging place to play.

More collaborations are on the way as well. He mentions a second edition of the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, more work with African musicians, and a desire to do more tuba band music "sooner rather than later." There will also be projects even he doesn't know about yet. "I work with this person and that person. Most of this stuff has not been stuff that I planned, it just worked out that way.

Whoever Taj works with and whatever sounds he puts his hand to in the coming years, you can bet that the blues will play a big part. "You got that tone together," he says, "everything else is flavor."


Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band at Yoshi's
Shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm
1330 Fillmore St
San Francisco, CA
(415) 655-5600

Bruford - Borstlap's "In Two Minds"

Last May, I attended the 2007 edition of the Bath International Music Festival. In addition to being one of England's most beautiful and architectural cities, Bath attracts some of the greatest musicians from around the globe; Mavis Staples & Jazz Jamaica, the electronica of Arthurs & Bown and People Like Us; the folk stylings of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill; and the genre crossing Iain Ballamy & Stian Carstensen. My personal favorites however, were the jazz duo of drummer Bill Bruford and pianist Michiel Borstlap. After a high profile and illustrious career as the rock drummer of his generation (with Yes, Genesis and King Crimson), Bruford carved out an equally successful name as a jazz drummer through his jazz-rock ensemble Earthworks. Borstlap is a brilliant pianist, capable of creating solos of dazzling complexity, but also able to employ space and subtlety. Together they adopt a witty, conversational style: the table talk may turn as much to Liszt Scherzos as to jazz standards and free spirited improvisation. Now comes a recording of that performance in Bath and Norway, the aptly named "In Two Minds".

'In Two Minds' is the second CD to come from this pairing of fine musicians, and will no doubt be hugely anticipated by the large and dedicated fan base built up by these two artists in addition to their own separate respective fan bases who have witnessed them in concert since the duo's first formal collaboration back in 2002. Recorded in 2007, 'In Two Minds' features eleven intimate and conversational tracks of new, original material, and a stand-out reading of the Miles Davis classic 'All Blues'. Released on the Summerfold imprint, the Bruford-Borstlap Duo will again be playing selected live dates in the run up to the release of this album, including their London debut at the London Jazz Festival on 24th November 2007.

I saw Bruford's first piano-drum duo with the Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz in 1982, at New York City's now defunct Bottom Line, and later in 1983, at D.C.'s also defunct Bayou. Bruford and Moraz had released two albums, the acoustic "Music for Piano and Drums", and the electronic "Flags". Consequently, these recordings and others have been reissued on Bruford's new record labels: Summerfold and Winterfold. With their first CD, "Every Step A Dance, Every Word A Song", and a DVD titled "In Concert In Holland", Bruford teamed up with Dutch keyboard master Michiel Borstlap, in duets culled from their 2003-2004 European tour. Although the duo's efforts are rooted in jazz, there are hints of the progressive-rock/New Age flavor of "Flags", where Borstlap employs synthesizer for choruses and textures, and Bruford's well known polyrhythmic beats and syncopations that propel this beautiful musical journey.

Bruford met first Dutch pianist Michiel Borstlap in 2002, and they began playing duo shows that were less about the confines of structure and more about what Bruford terms "performance-based" music, music of the moment where spontaneity and interaction were the predominant factors. Gratefully, the duo returns with "In Two Minds", a live recording of their summer 2007 tour of Norway and England.


Michiel Borstlap and Bill Bruford at the 2007 Bath Festival
Photo by Tim Dickeson

The "Left of the Dial" reviewer Glenn Astarita once noted that "Borstlap primarily uses a grand piano as his instrument of choice via a potpourri of swing vamps, and sublime moments, while Bruford's shading exercises, add color and additional warmth. Highlights include segments where the duo expands themes and unexpectedly switch gears as they often instill a polytonal outlook during jazz standards such as Monk's "Bemsha Swing," for example.

The piece titled "Swansong" from their first CD, is a compelling opus that defines the artists' overriding sense of musical intimacy coupled with power and tenacity. Here, Borstlap executes slashing crescendos amid Art Tatum-like chord voicings, as the unit melds quaint balladry with bluesy passages. The fun factor continues with Bruford's drumming onslaught, which serves as a prelude of sorts, to Borstlap's shrewd use of a synth chorale voicing to finalize the piece. Simply stated, it's about synergy and singular techniques rooted with elements of joy and precision.