Sunday, October 24
The Center for the Arts presents at
VETERANS MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM
Taj Mahal Trio
with Vieux Farka Toure opening
7:30PM, $45 General Admission
$65 VIP seating includes reserved seats,
reserved parking, (limited to the first 100 guests), 1 drink coupon
PLENTY OF ROOM TO DANCE!

"...boldest and most eclectic of blues musicians,
Taj Mahal has become a legend by following his unique vision."
- About.com

"One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues,
singer/multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal played an enormous role
in revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues."
- AllMusic.com

"...Taj Mahal was one of the first major artists, if not the very first one, to pursue the possibilities of world music. Even the blues he was playing in the early 70s showed an aptitude for spicing the mix with flavours that always kept him a yard or so distant from being an out-and-out blues performer."
- Rough Guide to Rock

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal, a two-time Grammy winner and one of the most influential American blues and roots artists of the past half-century, may best be described as a collaborator. His recording career includes working with The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Etta James, Toumani Diabate, Los Lobos, and many more. One of the reasons for Taj's appeal is his direct connection to the roots. Early on in his career 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. In his never-ending exploration of the complex origins and underpinnings of American music, he has forged a four-decade career by gathering and distilling countless musical traditions from a range of sources: the Mississippi Delta, the Appalachian backwoods, the African continent, the Hawaiian islands, Europe, the Caribbean and more.

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 descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel - moved to Springfield, MA, when he was quite young and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his father's short-wave radio. He particularly loved the blues - both acoustic and electric - and early rock & rollers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias 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 moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitarist Ry Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didn't quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of Americana, which anticipated a number of roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.

Frustrated, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s blues revival, 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 three records built Mahal's reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s, Mahal's musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971's Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following year's double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy outing, Mo' Roots.

Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976 recording three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahal's work and he spent much of the '80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received children's albums with Shake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991. The same year marked Mahal's full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Dancing the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more rock, pop, and R&B-flavored territory; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world 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 depth; 1999's Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate.

His 2008 release, Maestro, marked the fortieth anniversary of Taj’s rich and varied recording career by mixing original material with chestnuts from vintage sources and newcomers alike. Guests include Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Angelique Kidjo, Los Lobos, Ziggy Marley and others – many of whom have been directly influenced by Taj’s music and guidance.

"...Vieux Farka Touré is forging his own identity, expanding on his father’s drones and gnarled picking patterns with a rocker’s joyful audacity." - The New York Times

"Here in Africa, he who teaches you in life, you follow his path. As [Ali] neared the end of his life, I knew that the wisdom he imparted on me was important to spread." - Vieux Farka Touré

Vieux Farka Touré, the son of the great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, has already stepped out from his late father’s shadow. Ali Farka Touré proved – in case anyone ever doubted it – that the soul of the blues could be found in West Africa. His son Vieux is turning heads with a more radical idea: that those western Saharan roots can be heard in everything from the jam band scene to Jamaican dub.

Fondo, Vieux’s newest recording, is more than a stirring mix of traditional instruments and modern production. More than a world music artist embracing the sounds of rock, it is the sound of a young man coming into his own. His self-titled debut, released in 2006, seemed to be the passing of a torch, as it included the last recordings by his legendary father, and a healthy dose of traditional Malian songs from his father’s repertoire. But his new album has only one traditional song; everything else was written by Vieux himself. The album’s opening salvo, “Fafa,” has a bluesy rhythm and intricate guitar solos that may recall Eric Clapton’s glory days with Cream.

www.vieuxfarkatoure.com

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