Taj Mahal – HuffPost 9.17.12

Mike Ragogna: Taj, what’s your advice for new artists?

Taj Mahal: New artists? I’m not limited to blues, I’m just talking about music. What I usually say to artists is that people try to figure out how one becomes unique. There are a lot of reasons for that. One reason is that you have a respect for your tradition, your culture. Guys got a French brother or a Scottish father or a French father and, you know, an Italian mother. If you’re 19 years old and you’re playing music, why wouldn’t you take the time to investigate, you know, what would be your role as a popular musician in the culture of your parents or a musician in either of those cultures, you know? Find out what it is that you can use. Put it down in your hand, mold it up like a piece of clay, add some blues, R&B, or some pop or country or some reggae and some classical music. You’re going to be unique. I mean, it’s right there. In my estimation, it is like the concept of cooking or alchemy, which is, to me, cooking with elements. The other cooking is with vegetables and oils, onions, etc. This is something that’s going to be more as people change their ways, buy their foods, spending and puttin’ out that money, to have it all 3,000 miles across the country. They’re going to have something close by dealing with everything that’s 25 miles outside your city. The reason it’s going to be is because some people are going to, in the future, in order to change their economic basis to something that makes some sense is to stop taking for granted that the supermarket down the road is always going to be there. That leads to the same kind of thing as music. You’re going to be more self-sufficient about how you produce it. That’s all I’ve been headed toward. All I want is to play for myself more than anything else because it helped to balance out just being inside your head.

MR: Yeah.

TM: And being an intellectual. If you can’t feel it in your body and in your movement… I am sure a lot of people live their lives that way, but I didn’t want to. I encourage people to move on both levels. Have the mind and body working soundly together and music is something that helps that.