A biography for Taj Mahalhasn’t been written yet.
“When I was a kid, there was so much talent outside of recorded music.”
“If the Rolling Stones are playing a concert across town, that's not my audience anyways. But I do find that there's a lot of people coming back around to see me again.”
“As a kid, I always felt connected to Africa; it was something I was very proud of.”
“I don't need the credits for playing the blues and paying the dues. I've already done it. There are some other things to do here - movies and scores and voice-overs.”
“I enjoy music wherever it's coming from.”
“American music is a powerful ingredient in international music, and as much as it comes from within, it also comes from without.”
“When I was 5 or 6, I was messing around with the piano, and I listened to everything from Chopin to boogie-woogie.”
“I'm doing exactly what I should be doing, every day on the road.”
“As I got more involved in music, one of the things that made me excited, from the time I was a child, was that clear link between our ancestors and the sounds we hear today.”
“I've got tons more stuff to do.”
“I wanted to explore the connections between different kinds of music.”
“What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.”
“I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do, and I still like what I can do musically.”
“I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.”
“I just worked my own personal thoughts into my music, and just kept at it until I found a way in.”
“I was always looking for evidence of these common musical roots, but I was too young to know that what I was doing was called ethnomusicology.”
“I base myself in African-derived music. Blues is one of the modern forms of African music.”
“What the future of the planet and music and art and all of it is sharing; it's diversity.”
“The one thing I've always demanded of the records I've made is that they be danceable.”
“I was always taught that Latin, Caribbean people were cousins to me, as well as blues was a cousin to me, as well as Africans were direct relatives to me. It was all a part of my language.”