Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Taj Mahal Takes on the American Songbook

As a high school student living in a Jewish neighborhood just north of the Philadelphia border, I never heard of Taj Mahal until I became an undergraduate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in September of 1963. His name was, of course, a stage name inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s commitment to social tolerance. He began performing on the East Coast, but his career began to take off after his move to Santa Monica in 1964. He was one of several musicians from whom I learned about blues as a genre.

Cover of the album being discussed

Mahal will turn 81 next month, and he seems to be having fun with broadening his repertoire. This Friday Stony Plain will release his latest album, entitled simply Savoy. As usual, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

The opening track is, as might be guessed, “Stompin’ at the Savoy;” but it sort of serves as “background music” to “set the stage” for the remaining thirteen tracks, which review many of the favorite standards from the American Songbook. While I enjoy the ways in which Mahal has put his own personal twist on each of those Songbook tunes, I worry a bit about whether or not the current generation of listeners knows very much (if anything) about what the Songbook is and the ways in which several generations of jazz and pop vocalists had put it to good use. Mahal has now joined that crowd, but each track is rich with his own approaches to delivery. However, I suspect that his style will not resonate with much impact among those generations that are younger than my own.

I grew up being taught a bevy of quotations taken from Abraham Lincoln. The one that really stuck with me was: “we cannot escape history.” (Full disclaimer: I have Aaron Copland to thank for bringing that phrase to my attention!) These days, however, whenever I cite that phrase to many significantly younger than I am, the only reply I expect is, “Who cares?” That marks the end of the discourse and my return to a collection of recordings that evoke pleasant memories!

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