Henry Saint Claire Fredericks Jr., better known as Taj Mahal, was born on May 17, 1942, in New York City. His family moved to Springfield, MA when he was quite young. He would study at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in the 1960s and assume his stage after dreaming about the famous palace, Mahatma Gandhi, India, and social tolerance. He was inducted into the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF) over the weekend of April 19 and 20, 2024 at the Boch Center in Boston as one of ten Solo Living Artists.
Mahal was raised in a musical environment, his mother being a member of a local gospel choir and his father, Henry Saint Claire Fredericks Sr., was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player. His father died when Mahal was 11 years old. His mother remarried and his stepfather had a guitar, which the young Mahal learned to play when he was 13 or 14. He would also learn to play the piano, harmonica, clarinet, and eventually the banjo.
Traditional blues music was enjoying a revival in the 1960s just like folk music was. Taj Mahal was at the forefront of blues revivalists who were introducing the genre to a new and younger audience. The music of Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and other old guard bluesmen were “rediscovered” thanks to Mahal and others of his generation.
Revitalizing the blues and giving it new life to a new audience was one thing. Mahal went further and made it innovative and progressive. From his studies at the University of Massachusetts, he learned to study music as a reflection of the culture in which it developed. Over time, he was able to incorporate elements of African roots music, reggae, zydeco, jazz, calypso, and other sounds into his music. He is considered by many to be a pioneer in what is now known as world music.
On February 8, 2006, Governor Mitt Romney declared Taj Mahal The Official Blues Musician of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A month later, he and his sister, the late Carol Fredericks, received the James W. Dodge Memorial Foreign Language Advocacy Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages for their efforts in raising awareness of the music’s potential to foster genuine intercultural communication.
Mahal has been nominated for a Grammy Award ten times, winning four. He also is a 2006 Blues Music Award winner in the category of Historical Album of the Year for The Essential Taj Mahal. Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC granted him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree on May 22, 2011. The Americana Music Association gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Taj Mahal has recorded dozens of albums, collaborated on many others, and performed countless concerts. He shared with the San Francisco Jazz Organization the goal that keeps him going. “As long as I’m never sitting here, saying to myself, ‘You know? You had an idea 50 years ago, and you didn’t follow through,’ I’m really happy,” he says. “It doesn’t even matter that other people get to hear it. It matters that I get to hear it – that I did it.”
[Material in this article was obtained from the following websites: Britannica, Acoustic Blues, Reddit, All About Jazz, Acoustic Roots and Country Blues, SF Jazz, and Taj Mahal’s official website.]
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