Have you got the blues? Like, maybe those “COVID’s a mess, there’s war in Ukraine, things have gone sideways” kind of blues?
Then you should buy a ticket to this summer’s Vancouver Island MusicFest. Because Taj Mahal is coming back, and he’s gonna sing those blues straight into your soul.
Taj Mahal is a legend in blues music. Doug Cox is the executive producer of this year’s MusicFest, and he’s really excited that Taj Mahal is coming.
“It is huge, it’s very exciting, and we are just really thrilled that we are going to have him at the festival again. He’s the perfect MusicFest act,” he told the Comox Valley Record. “He kind of represents everything we are about at the festival.”
Taj Mahal wasn’t always going to be a musician. Both of his parents were musicians, but when he was young, he went to university for agriculture. But he joined a band shortly after he graduated, and his career took a whole different direction.
“When you think about acoustic blues players from his generation…he was really the only one that, in my eyes, made it to that status of superstar status,” Cox said.
“He has been a hugely important artist… and he’s so good!”
Taj Mahal has won the Grammy award for Best Contemporary Blues Album three times.
“What inspires me most about my career is that I’ve been able to make a living playing the music that I always loved and wanted to play since the early 50s,” Mahal says on his website.
“I’m doing this the old-fashioned way and it ain’t easy. I work it and I earn it. My relationship with my audience has been fun, with great respect going both ways!”
The last time Taj Mahal played MusicFest was in 2008.
This year, he takes the stage on Saturday night, July 9th. He’ll have his band with him.
And we’ll be in the audience, letting him sing our blues away.
