TAJ MAHAL是一位很重要的BLUES艺人，虽然他在中国的知名度远没有同时代的ERIC CLAPTON、JIMI HENDRIX等人高，但他在60年代的几张专辑，都是很不错的BLUES REVIVAL时代的精品。最近COLUMBIA将TAJ MAHAL早年的作品全部再版，这张专辑得以重新出现在唱片店里。《THE NATCH'BLUES》是TAJ MAHAL的第二张专辑，也是他最著名的作品。在专辑的扉页里，TAJ MAHAL用文字表达了对密西西比三角洲BLUES大师BLIND WILLIE MCTELL和MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL的敬意，也由此阐述了专辑的音乐原则：回到乡村，寻找BLUES的根源。专辑虽然在配制上是电声化的，而钢琴的使用也似乎带有城市布鲁斯的色彩，但本质却完全是乡村布鲁斯化的，十分纯真，甚至根本没有沾上当时流行的迷幻布鲁斯的味道。TAJ MAHAL的歌声、JESSIE EDWIN DAVIS的吉他、AL COOPER的钢琴和TAJ MAHAL的口琴演奏，是专辑的四大亮点。布鲁斯是什么？这张专辑也许能给你提供一个答案：布鲁斯是黑暗中一道来自内心的亮光，让你能有足够的勇气选择生存，你不一定要热爱生活，但你有权利去为自己活下去，甜蜜和苦难，都是必须经历的过程。One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm, Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologists interest in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the world — reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the blues as part of a wider musical context. Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed too far from his laid-back country blues foundation. Blues purists naturally didnt have much use for Mahals music and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still, Mahals concept seemed somewhat vindicated in the 90s, when a cadre of young bluesmen began to follow his lead — both acoustic revivalists (Keb Mo, Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart).Taj Mahal was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents — his father a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel — moved to Springfield, MA, when he was quite young and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his fathers short-wave radio. He particularly loved the blues — both acoustic and electric — and early rock & rollers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed Taj Mahal & the Elektras, which played around the area during the early 60s. After graduating, Mahal moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitarist Ry Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didnt quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of Americana, which anticipated a number of roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.Frustrated, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the 60s blues revival, as did its follow-up, Natchl Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969 and taken together, those three records built Mahals reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early 70s, Mahals musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971s Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following years double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy outing, Mo Roots.Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976, upon which point he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahals work and he spent much of the 80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received childrens albums with Shake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991. The same year marked Mahals full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Dancing the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more rock, pop, and R&B-flavored territory; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world music. 1995s Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with classical Indian musicians; 1998s Sacred Island was recorded with his new Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater depth; 1999s Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate.