Taj Mahal Sextet at Fox Tucson Theatre on Tuesday, March 15th
KXCI Presents! Taj Mahal transcends the blues by revealing their magnificent scope to the world. With a musicologist’s mind, Taj Mahal has pursued and elevated roots and blues music with devotion and skill.
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*CLICK FOR CONTEST RULES* The deadline to enter is through 5pm Monday, March 14th. The winners of (1) pair of tickets will be selected at random (one entry per person). KXCI offices are currently closed due to Covid-19. During this time, ticket winners will be put on the guest list and must present ID at the venue box office on the night of the show to gain entry. Winners will be notified to the email address entered in the contest.
Taj Mahal Sextet
Taj Mahal doesn’t wait for permission. If a sound intrigues him, he sets out to make it. If origins mystify him, he moves to trace them. If rules get in his way, he unapologetically breaks them. To Taj, convention means nothing, but traditions are holy. He has pushed music and culture forward, all while looking lovingly back.
“I just want to be able to make the music that I’m hearing come to me––and that’s what I did,” Taj says. The 76-year-old is home in Berkeley, reflecting on six decades of music making. “When I say, ‘I did,’ I’m not coming from the ego. The music comes from somewhere. You’re just the conduit it comes through. You’re there to receive the gift.”
Taj is a towering musical figure––a legend who transcended the blues not by leaving them behind, but by revealing their magnificent scope to the world. “The blues is bigger than most people think,” he says. “You could hear Mozart play the blues. It might be more like a lament. It might be more melancholy. But I’m going to tell you: the blues is in there.”
If anyone knows where to find the blues, it’s Taj. A brilliant artist with a musicologist’s mind, he has pursued and elevated the roots of beloved sounds with boundless devotion and skill. Then, as he traced origins to the American South, the Caribbean, Africa, and elsewhere, he created entirely new sounds, over and over again. As a result, he’s not only a god to rock-and-roll icons such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, but also a hero to ambitious artists toiling in obscurity who are determined to combine sounds that have heretofore been ostracized from one another. No one is as simultaneously traditional and avant-garde.
