Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band

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 82-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 traced the roots of beloved sounds and repeatedly created new ones. His work has inspired rock-and-roll icons and ambitious artists blending sounds that had been kept apart. His honors include a 2022 Grammy win for 'Get On Board' (with Ry Cooder), a Grammy for the Sextet's recording at Leon Russell's Church Studio in Tulsa, bringing his total to five Grammy wins and 16 nominations, Blues Hall of Fame membership, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and recognition as a 2025 Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree.

Taj's exploration of music began as an exploration of self. He was born in 1942 in Harlem to musical parents — his father a jazz pianist with Caribbean roots and his mother a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina. "I was raised really conscious of my African roots," Taj says. "So I was trying to find out: where does what we do here connect to what we left there?"

In the early 1950s his family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, a melting pot of immigrants where music was a central part of community life. Piano lessons didn't stick — "I'd already heard what I wanted to play" — and an influential blues guitarist who moved in next door became an early mentor. Taj studied agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, then headed west in 1964.

In Los Angeles he formed the six-piece Rising Sons with Ry Cooder. The group opened for Otis Redding, the Temptations, and more; an album they recorded wasn't released until about 30 years later. "I guess that's when they decided, 'Whoa. I guess this guy is real,'" Taj says, with a hint of a smirk.

His solo debut arrived in 1967, followed in 1968 by The Natch'l Blues and a performance in The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. In 1969 he released the double album Giant Step / De Ole Folks at Home. The 1970s included the Grammy-nominated soundtrack for Sounder and increasing experimentation with global fusions. In the 1980s he spent time in Hawaii and absorbed island sounds while touring internationally, folding Latin, reggae, Caribbean, calypso, Cajun, jazz, and more into an Afrocentric roots base.

The 1990s brought back-to-back Grammy wins with the Phantom Blues Band for Señor Blues and Shoutin' in Key. "I noticed that when it came to complicated pieces of blues music, they'd never get played," Taj says. "It's one of the reasons we put Señor Blues out — to say, 'You guys, you know there is more that just the same old [imitates a beat] di da di di di da.'" Over the years he's become proficient on about 20 different instruments by watching players, getting instruments, and remembering the music he heard.

In the 21st century he released Maestro (2008), featuring a global mix of collaborators. His 2017 collaboration with Keb' Mo', TajMo, earned a Grammy. They regrouped in 2023–24 to record a follow-up TajMo record due out in Spring 2025. Projects including 'Get On Board,' his live recordings from the Church Studio in Tulsa, and 'Savoy' are among the works he's touring behind or developing.

Taj says his motivation isn't hunger or thirst but "more knowledge of self — to realize that almost everything is right here." As he reflects on dozens of albums, collaborations, and live experiences, he finds satisfaction in one idea: "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. It doesn't even matter that other people get to hear it. It matters that I get to hear it — that I did it."