Taj Mahal is his stage name: real name, Henry Saint Clair Fredericks.
[Wikipedia excerpts] -- He is a blues musician, a singer-songwriter, and film composer; he plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments.
He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific.
Born in 1942 in Harlem, Taj Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was raised in a musical environment; his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player.
His family owned a shortwave radio which received music broadcasts from around the world, exposing him at an early age to world music.
Early in childhood he recognized the stark differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home.
Taj also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of musicians such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson.
His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, and instilled in their son a sense of pride in his Caribbean and African ancestry through their stories.
...Taj Mahal worked on a farm when he was a teenager, and he developed a passion for farming that nearly rivaled his love of music....He believes in growing your own food; he has said,
"You have a whole generation of kids who think everything comes out of a box and a can, and they don't know you can grow most of your food."
Because of his personal support of the family farm, Taj Mahal regularly performs at Farm Aid concerts. [end, Wikipedia excerpts]
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I got to see Taj Mahal perform in Boston, the summer between freshman and sophomore year.
The free encyclopedia says his stage name came to him in dreams....
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