Songs

H. B., Taj Mahal

19 Comments

Today is the 71st birthday of the incomparable American musician Taj Mahal.

Henry St. Claire Fredericks was born in Harlem and raised in Springfield Massachusetts, but his world turned out to be much larger than that. The wide-ranging career he has had as Taj Mahal is clear evidence that there is much to be gained by indulging a curious mind – he’s an accomplished artist and a world music scholar. The skill he exhibits today is a testament to the many influences he has absorbed along the way.

Taj Mahal drew inspiration from his father’s record collection, his stepfather’s guitar, and his neighbor’s style, just to name three things that went into the mix.

He’s also a man of the Earth, having studied agriculture in the ’60’s. Apparently he has milked many, many cows, and is one of those people who could sustain himself off the land given the right tools and enough time.

Searching for a Taj Mahal live performance on You Tube, I found this gem, which was uploaded in 2008 but it’s actually a recording made in Bonn, Germany in March of 1995.

He’s 53, but must have been spending some time out in the field, wrestling more cows. Look at those arms!

Here’s a quote from Taj Mahal’s website:

“I didn’t want to fall into the trap of complacency. 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.”

How do you avoid complacency?

19 thoughts on “H. B., Taj Mahal”

  1. Good morning. Taj and I are the same age. I don’t know how Taj feels about getting. At 71 years of age I am well aware that I am no longer young. Apparently Taj has had many interests during his life and I also have a fairly wide range of interests. Although I might be slowing down, I still have plenty of things I want to do. I think all of those things that I have caught my attention throughout my life provide me with more than enough to do and I don’t see any chance of becoming complacent. I might do some foolish things, but I will not be complacent.

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  2. taj is a favorite. saw him last summer at the zoo. he is a treat. he loves bringing his stuff to the world. i think thats the trick. learn how to love bringing your stuff to the world. along the way you are bound to pick up more stuff to bring with you. dales got astronomy, jims got seeds, bir has her dancing, life goes on and the areas of interest you ring your self with provide the spice. people ask how you get interested in so many different things and i always ask how you stop. i am a mile wide and an inch deep, i love looking into things and that always leads to my interest popping up over here then over there.
    taj has always done wonderful live shows and his warm ups have been good too. i saw him at the fitzgerald a while back with the unknown singer norah jones as his opening act, years before that it was keb mo he introduced me to. back the 70’s there was this woman who would sing at his concerts form the audience and she was so incredible that taj at one of the concerts said cmon up on the stage , you with the voice. he waited a second and said cmon you know who im talking about. she came up on stage and sang three or four numbers with him. she had a big beautiful voice like the lady in the gospel choir and it was a wonder to behold. the next time taj was in town he asked for her by name and she wasnt there, he was disappointed because he thought of minneapolis he thought of her, after hearing her 4 or 5 years running she was gone. maybe she liked being the voice in the dark rather than the sideman on stage. taj moved to hawaii and came up with that weird sounding guitar and the carribian beat. i like his delta blues guitar for the 70’s so much better but hes never asked me. lahina is a good place to put your feet up. if you could choose any where on the planet to put your feet up why wouldnt it be lahina i remember thinking when i heard he picked that for his home base. life can be simple. look for good stuff and plug it in.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    One thing I don’t quite get about me is that I appear to have been born without the ability to be complacent. It must be all those old pioneer, wanderer-explorer genes peculiar to the frontier explorers in the USA–as soon as I get things the way I want them and I am comfortable, nearly complacent, the NEW SHINY THING wafts by and there I go.

    Oh, look, a new blog… I see the possibilities in this……poof. I’m gone.

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  4. Playing bass and singing really keeps me on my toes. We have two different constellations of musicians who we perform with, One involves some native american friends with whom we play more gospel and faith oriented material with a little rock and roll thrown in, and the other with a psychology colleague who used to be a professional keyboard player for 30 years and who prefers to play late 60’s and early 70’s rock and roll with more contemporary stuff and blues thrown in. Sometimes i have to sing Wayfaring Stranger or I am Warrior. With the other group we play Sweet Home Chicago, the Circle of Life, or stuff by The Band and Dylan.

    Fargo is going to be crazy since tomorrow is the Fargo Marathon.

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    1. We have a strangely musical psychology dept. In addition to the keyboard player, our immediate supervisor, a woman in her 60’s, played acoustic guitar in a Chicago-based group called Dr. Cuddley’s Prescription. They had a couple of recordings and one minor hit in the midwest. Anyone ever hear of them? I remember hearing a song by them on a station out of Sioux Falls when I was in Jr. High or late grade school.

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        2. My interest in music started out with 45 rpm singles like the one in that video.

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  5. I think the cosmic response to me even THINKING, “what could possibly go wrong?” takes any complacency I may be indulging in and snaps me right out of it.

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  6. I try to hang out with people smarter than me and people with broad interests. Especially the “smarter than me” people are good at introducing stuff (intentionally or not) that makes me stretch my mental muscles. Right now that is leading me down a path to learn more about predictive analytics – which is an odd place for a gal who hasn’t had a math class since Advanced Algebra (let alone any flavor of statistics) to wind up.

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  7. I keep committing to more projects, just to keep the edge on. “I think I’ll re-cover the couch!… Sure, I’ll be choir librarian”… I’ll dig up all the errant lilies-of-the-valley before Sunday…

    Which reminds me, OT: BBC here in Robbinsdale Sunday at 2:00.
    HB, TM – one of my favorites too.

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  9. Whenever I feel the urge to NOT be complacent, I take a nap.

    (That’s my feeble attempt at humor, but unfortunately it’s too close to the truth to be really funny.)

    I have found that if I try to project the logical conclusion of something, that can galvanize me into action. For instance, whenever I visit my mother (or both my parents when my dad was still alive), I come back Super-Motivated to Clear the Clutter in my life. There’s something about being faced with a huge, cluttered mess (this is an understatement of what her apartment is like) and realizing that people don’t set out with the goal of filling every square inch of every surface and most of the floor with Stuff, it just gradually happens. So even though my clutter has not yet reached the point that people would think I’m a hoarder, seeing how my mom lives inspires me to get off my butt and make darn sure that I don’t end up like her and my dad.So when I am faced with a decision to keep or get rid of things, I try to imagine what would happen in the future if I kept it all.That can help me to not be complacent about my stuff.

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    1. After my Aunt passed away, my Uncle married her sister who had been a school teacher. My Dad helped clear out her house after she passed away. Among many other things, she had saved all the presents given to her by her students during her many years of teaching. It took many days to clean out that house and my mother and Uncle were not much help. They spent most of their time looking at all of the stuff before finally getting rid of almost everything.

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      1. My sister’s husband says that when my mom dies, we’re going to get a dumpster and just pitch everything into it. No sorting, just pitching. Sometimes I wish we could do that now, before she dies.

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  10. i have a true problem and complacency aint it. i have so much bubbling away up there i go to write it down on my phone message pad and get sidetracked with another idea on route form my brain to my hand and have to hang on to the idea long enough to write it down. once its down i start a file and have an extended period to tweek it and massage it into reality. i have some i have been incubating for years and others that pop up get done and on to the next thing with that now in my life experience. security is only for the insecure. i dont know what complacency is a part of but it is nothing that is getting out of control with me. what ever it is i dont need to dig to fix a complacency dilemma. maybe an overabundancy of stuff racing around keeping you from getting your primary focus looked after dilema but complacency…nah

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgK8XTX-ywc

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  11. If I’m being complacent, would I know?

    Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
    – Vladimir Nabokov

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