Legendary blues musician Taj Mahal has a simple message about the wide range of music in his repertoire.<\/p>\n
\u201cJazz will give you back your mind. Reggae will give you back your body,\u201d he said in a phone call Tuesday. \u201cBut the blues will give you back your soul, and that\u2019s music that\u2019ll melt in your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 84-year-old Mahal is still going strong after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys last year in addition to a Grammy win for best traditional blues album. He released a new album, \u201cTime,\u201d on May 1 via Resonatin\u2019 Records\/Thirty Tigers that delves into the blues with stops in reggae, folk, roots and soul music.<\/p>\n
Mahal is also hitting the road for a tour that includes a July 11 stop at the Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall, where he\u2019ll be backed by longtime collaborators the Phantom Blues Band.<\/p>\n
In a call Tuesday from northern California, Mahal spoke with TribLive about finding a drummer in Pittsburgh, the new album, recording Bill Wither\u2019s \u201cTime\u201d and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.<\/p>\n
Do you have any memories from Pittsburgh shows in the past?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve had several great shows there, but the first great one was back in about \u201871, I think it was. I had the big tuba band that was playing at the Syria Mosque. We were opening for Little Richard, and it was a pretty exciting gig. We met his drummer, he came over to check us out and he really got excited by what was happening. So he tried to get Richard\u2019s band to come over and check us out and they said, \u201cOh no, we ain\u2019t gonna check them cats out. We\u2019re with Richard.\u201d<\/p>\n So we heard him play. He played really good. The drummer was good, but he was having difficulty pushing the band with them kind of big horns and Bill Rich on the bass around and couldn\u2019t lock in as much, as good as I felt he could, but he was very good. But anyway, our road manager, he found out that Richard was playing out in Las Vegas and went out and we engaged the drummer and said, hey, if he\u2019s interested, we\u2019d like to have him play with us. So he gave his two-week notice and came over and played with us and got to record with us on the second album. The first album was the original drummer. And then the second album, he came in and played, his name was Jimmy Otey. He came and played with us. That\u2019s my one Syria Mosque story.<\/p>\n \u2026 But I knew about Pittsburgh through the jazz and through (jazz vocalist) Dakota Staton and the Pittsburgh Crawfords and (team owner) Gus Greenlee. My father used to get the Pittsburgh Courier. We read that in the \u201840s and the \u201850s.<\/p>\n You have the new album \u201cTime\u201d that\u2019s been out for a little bit. It seems to showcase the diversity of your musical interests, so was that purposeful or did it just happen naturally?<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of the time, most of the music that I\u2019ve been playing since I realized that the industry wasn\u2019t really supporting me \u2014 it was people outside of the industry that had direct contact with the music that I played \u2014 I just decided that, well, I\u2019m not going to stay in this one genre. I went one, two, three albums in the genre. And then I started moving, jazz, more rural forms of music, a couple of different solo albums, then more roots, which started stretching out to more music.<\/p>\n The common denominator in all of what we\u2019re doing is music from the (African) continent and sub-Saharan DNA and sources of musical styles and people, so that\u2019s what makes all popular music these days, some version of it. I won\u2019t mention names but several major people in the record companies will say, if you don\u2019t have 42% urban music in the foundation of your record company \u2014 urban re: black \u2014 you can\u2019t have a record company, because that\u2019s where you get your energy.<\/p>\n If you take it back all the way to the beginning of the country, it\u2019s people from the continent who set the energy of commerce and motion in this country. So it\u2019s the same thing, the actual version, a modern version of the same thing. I\u2019m just about the music, man. I\u2019m fascinated with the fact that there\u2019s so much, and I don\u2019t understand why, I mean, to make choices to stay in boxes, with the idea that maybe they might take them this time.<\/p>\n Ask me, sure, I\u2019d love to make Michael Jackson money. But that\u2019s not why I\u2019m here. Whatever you go for, you pay for, so I\u2019m happy with being free enough to be able to do whatever it is I think is music to me. I love my music. I listen to my own music. I know so many artists can\u2019t stand to listen to their own music. Are you kidding me? Why would you make it? You\u2019re the music giver. That wasn\u2019t a part, I never saw that rule in music, in the culture that I come from. No, we want to hear what you did. I find it really, really funny. Here come people who put everything in boxes asking me, do I put them in boxes? No, I don\u2019t put it in boxes.<\/p>\n I imagine that has to be freeing to not be pigeonholed.<\/strong><\/p>\n On the continent, they\u2019re varying people from Algeria to South Africa, but you don\u2019t put them in a box. They\u2019re there. They\u2019re all different parts of the same thing. I can understand coming out of the early years of the country, into the industrial revolution, there\u2019s always been compression on the workers, the people working their jobs every day. So they don\u2019t have a lot of room to be able to move around. I live a life of a musician, a composer, an artist, an instrumentalist, a singer. I\u2019m into art. I\u2019m into all kinds of different things. I\u2019m involved in agriculture and sustainable farming and permaculture and all those kind of things like that. People don\u2019t talk to me a lot about that, but those are things that concern me. I put out positive music. There\u2019s 60 albums. Find me talking about some bad stuff, not one, you won\u2019t find. It\u2019s always educating, bringing people to light.<\/p>\n I guess it\u2019s never too late to stop learning then, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n Right, that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing. I literally this morning picked up my guitar, which is never too far away from me when I\u2019m at home, because if I get an idea, I can walk into another room or go get it, but usually there\u2019s one laying around so you just pick it up or open a case. There was a song, I woke up this morning, that my late drummer had been singing but he never finished it, and I woke up and that\u2019s what I sat on side of the bed this morning when I finally started putting everything together, grabbed the guitar and was playing the notes out of it, cracking me up. I remember the notes, so I\u2019m sitting on guitar.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m doing now is a lot of songs that I know but I never played. Some of them are standards, some of them are just things that I heard, just see what the finger is like, changing my hands on the neck of the guitar because I learned how to play \u2014 I\u2019m just a natural player. I didn\u2019t study how to hold your hands and where to play all the notes. I\u2019m playing the notes where I feel them. So I\u2019m just still moving along learning. That\u2019s where I\u2019m at.<\/p>\n