Taj Mahal, Part 1

Chapter One: Resonations From Africa to America

Amy COUSTIC MUSIC IS roots, my chapel,” says Taj Mahal, the international treasure that adopted his stage name from one of the most iconic temples on the third stone from the sun. The maestro graciously invited Guitar Player to his home, where he took us to school and to church, delivering an unforgettable sermon on the sanctity of music.

Approaching the Taj Mahal residence in Berkeley, California, a Regal resonator tone accompanied by wind chimes emanates from the front porch, which is covered in bountiful springtime flora. The sound is timeless, the style familiar, yet exotic. I’m accompanied by Jules Leyhe, a bottleneck whiz who provided the Allman-centric lesson in GP’s July 2018 slide issue and is currently my guitar partner in my band, Spirit Hustler. Jules has been helping out the legendary roots musician during the pandemic, and he set up what turned out to be one of the most informal and informative interview experiences one can imagine.

Upon his arrival, Leyhe recognizes that Mahal is fingerpicking “Mkutano,” which he confirms has an East African influence. Taj proceeds to detail how it came from his experience playing in Zanzibar with a large ensemble that was “like an Arab orchestra,” and is documented on the 2005 album Mkutano Meets the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar.

So began our trip through time and space with one of the most worldly players walking the earth. As it turns out, he’s also one of the most unpretentious and downright hilarious mother-pluckers on the planet.

How is the Piedmont blues fingerstyle you picked up as a young man in North Carolina connected to African roots?

Fingerpicking in general goes back to the West African kora. It’s got 21 strings: 10 on one side of the neck and 11 on the other. You pluck with the thumb and fingers of both hands on either side. If you pluck a resonator guitar and articulate the notes just right by cutting off sustain with palm muting, it produces a somewhat similar sound.

You’ve played many different guitars over the years, but it seems you have a special love for the resonator.

Yeah, for a while it was resonators all the time. It took me a while to get to it, but once I got to the resonator, you never saw me without one. The electric guitar was still in front of me. Ground zero for me is acoustic guitar. When I started out, the guitar was an archtop with f-holes. What I saw was cowboy country players with round-hole guitars, whereas jazz and blues players had f-hole guitars. I was mostly looking at guys like Oscar Moore [Nat King Cole Trio] and Charlie Christian. It wasn’t until the ’60s that I saw southern black musicians playing round-hole guitars. I liked Chuck Berry when he came around, and even he was playing a big guitar with f-holes. The other guitars sounded twangy.

Acoustic music is my space, and I always told guitar players about the importance of having one. I remember being in Spain in 1970. I met a monster classical/flamenco player, and he asked me if he should switch to the electric guitar. I told him, “No matter what you do, don’t ever do that! Here you’ve got a real space in the world.” I’ve watched so many players give up that space, and then they can’t get back there because all they’re doing is playing electric licks on an acoustic guitar. Buddy Guy started out on a box guitar, and every once in a while he’ll go back and play one, but then he sounds the same as on an electric guitar.

You sound different depending on the instrument. How’d you get into the resonator?

Way back when I first heard the resonator guitar, I didn’t realize what it was. I only knew it was something different. Then, in the ’60s, I started seeing old pictures of all these guys, but it was Sister Rosetta Tharpe that played a sunburst National, similar to the one I came to play. I came to realize that on a trip home sometime in the late ’60s. I was sitting on the front porch playing a Duolian when my mother came out from the kitchen drying her hands on her apron, saying, “That sounds just like the guitar that Sister Rosetta Tharpe played.” Then she sat down next to me. We did a version of [Leadbelly’s] “Take This Hammer” and she nearly stomped a hole in the front porch! That’s when I started looking for pictures of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and I found a great one of her standing in a long gospel dress with that National guitar in her hands. I got a recording of her playing it. I didn’t know what tuning she used, but on “Up Above My Head,” with Andy Kirk’s ensemble and a big gospel choir behind her, she strums a chord at the end, and she’s obviously in open D tuning, what they used to call “Delta tuning.”

How did you come by your Duolian?

I got mine from a guy who couldn’t play very well, and then he took an acid trip while playing and realized that he really couldn’t play that well. [laughs] The only guy he knew that he thought played well was me, so he gifted me that instrument. Years later, he came back for it, and I was

“ACOUSTIC MUSIC IS MY SPACE. I ALWAYS TOLD GUITAR PLAYERS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING ONE”