The legendary American bluesman Taj Mahal, 81, was in fine form during a splendid concert at the my Blues Jazz Scenes 2024 Festival on Sunday, an occasion made even more memorable by the enchanting music of tourmate Sona Jobarteh.
It was the final night of a co-headlining tour that matched the Harlem-born octogenarian with a latter-day empress of the kora, a centuries-old stringed gourd instrument native to West Africa.
While some aging artists get up on stage and seem slightly lost, Taj was an engaging storyteller, folksy singer and personable bandleader who was in charge of every moment. The only sign of his advancing years was the fact that he performed from a seated position, surrounded by a vast array of stringed instruments at arm’s length.
Taj Mahal: – 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. Quantifying the 77-year-old’s significance is impossible, but people try anyway. A 2017 Grammy win for TajMo, Taj’s collaboration with Keb’ Mo’, brought his Grammy tally to three wins and 14 nominations, and underscored his undiminished relevance more than 50 years after his solo debut. Blues Hall of Fame membership, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and other honors punctuate his résumé. Taj appreciates the accolades, but his motivation lies elsewhere. “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. “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.”
Sona Jobarteh: – Preserving her musical past, Sona Jobarteh innovates to support a more humanitarian future. The spirit of Sona Jobarteh’s musical work stands on the mighty shoulders of The West African Griot Tradition; she is a living archive of the Gambian people. With one ear on the family’s historic reputation, one on the all-important future legacy, and her heart in both places, she is preparing a place today for the next generation. Her singing and Kora playing while fronting her band spring directly from this tradition. The extent of her recognition today is evidenced by more than 23+ million watchers on YouTube and beyond. All this despite singing in her native languages and keeping to her own path within the music industry.
Flanking the musical adventurer was an endlessly skilled band that included his bass player of more than five decades, Bill Ritts, Hawaiian guitarist Bobby Ingano on lap steel and Strat, drummer Tony D. – not to be confused with Ottawa guitar hero Tony D. and an important addition, Robert Greenidge, the superb steel-drum player who spent most of his career with Jimmy Buffet’s Coral Reefers Band and gives an unmistakable Caribbean flavour to the music.
“The blues is bigger than most people think,” Taj Mahal 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.”
During a set that danced around the blues, ranging from jaunty country blues to soulful Southern blues, with some banjo-blues, reggae and calypso strains added for good measure, Taj Mahal and his band kept it interesting throughout the show. Each musician had the opportunity to show off their talents during the solos, and the pace was lively but never rushed.
Between songs, Taj Mahal talked about periods of his life that aren’t widely known, touching on the early-career boost he got from the late Estelle Klein, the Canadian folk-festival pioneer who sent him on a cross-Canada tour of soft-seat theatres that helped establish his fondness for our nation.
He also mentioned the time he spent working on a farm in Massachusetts that was owned by French Canadians, surprising everyone with a killer Quebecois impression.
Early in the concert, he made a point of recognizing Jobarteh, ensuring we all knew of her significance as the first woman to play the kora professionally. She’s a descendant of one of the five main griot families of West Africa, but tradition dictates that only the men can play kora.
Trained on kora by her father, and thankful for his defiance of tradition, Jobarteh is a serious and soft-spoken 40-year-old woman who makes incredibly beautiful music on the ancient instrument, which is played by plucking strings that resonate through the gourd. I don’t think I’ve heard such lovely, intricate music from this instrument, which, in her hands, sounded like a jazz-informed fusion of harp and lute.
Her band was amazing, too, full of Afro-Latin polyrhythms and cascading guitar lines, and featuring the dextrous work of Jobarteh’s adult son on balafon, a marimba-like instrument that’s also part of the griot tradition.
The video is not from our festival, but it is the same program from the recent past
To make the experience even more enriching was learning that Jobarteh is dedicated to improving the lives of young Africans in general — not only women, and not only in music. She runs a school, the Gambia Academy, in her ancestral homeland that aims to reform the country’s colonial-era educational system. All the proceeds from her CD sales support the school, she noted.
At the end of the show, Taj Mahal invited Jobarteh and her crew back on stage for a jubilant set-closer that served as the grand finale of their journey together. The next chapter sees Taj Mahal and Jobarteh continues her trek through the EU.
