Taj Mahal Concert NYC July 28, 2011 Blues Afro Caribbean Composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Taj Mahal is one of the most prominent and influential figures in late 20th century blues and roots music. Though his career began more than four decades ago with American blues, he has broadened his artistic scope over the years to include music representing virtually every corner of the world — west Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, the Hawaiian islands and so much more. Henry St. Claire Fredericks Harlem on May 17, 1942 Taj grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Father, a jazz pianist, composer and arranger of Caribbean descent, and his mother a gospel singing schoolteacher from South Carolina. His father had an extensive record collection. He started classical piano, also playing the clarinet, trombone and harmonica, and loved to sing. He discovered his stepfather’s guitar and became serious about it in his early teens when a guitarist from North Carolina moved in next door and taught him the various styles of Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed and other titans of Delta and Chicago blues. “We spoke several dialects in my house — Southern, Caribbean, African — and we heard dialects from eastern and western Europe,” Taj recalls. In addition, musicians from the Caribbean, Africa and all over the US frequently visited the Fredericks home, and Taj became even more fascinated with roots — the origins of all the different forms of …

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