‘Head to shoes,’ banding together with the Blues

Growing up in Delhi, Karan Mahajan would often marvel at the other Taj Mahal. American musician Henry St Claire Fredericks Jr — who reshaped Blues music with sounds from India, the Caribbean, Africa, Hawaii, and the South Pacific in the 1960s and 1970s — ruled the soundtrack of Mahajan’s pre-teen car rides with his Blues-loving father.
While legendary singer Buddy Guy insisted that he’d got the blues from his head down to his shoes, Henry — the Grammy-winner who had assumed the stage alias ‘Taj Mahal’ after hearing it in a dream — strummed: “I went upstairs to pack my leavin’ trunk, I ain’t see no blues, whiskey made me sloppy drunk.” This acoustic muscle memory makes next weekend “surreal” for Mahajan.
As winners of the Mahindra Blues Hunt, the Karan Mahajan Band will perform at the Mahindra Blues Festival on February 11 and 12 along with artistes Taj Mahal and Buddy Guy apart from Ivan Singh, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram and Arinjoy Sarkar and the Arinjoy Trio. “It was at the Mahindra Festival in 2011 that I first heard Buddy Guy live,” recalls Mahajan, who finds Guy’s music to be “fearless” and“ playful — elements that, Mahajan believes, bled into Jimi Hendrix’s style.
Mahajan was around 13 years old when he first picked up a “cheap” guitar after four years of learning tabla as part of the school curriculum. “It was a knock off of Gibson called Givson,” recalls Mahajan. Later, having formally trained at the Global Music Institute, the Delhi-based guitarist worked with various local musicians including Takar Nabam aka Same Sky, Isaac Smith aka Sneak Attack and Philippe Aerts aka The Piano Man.
Since its birth in 2019, the Karan Mahajan Band — which draws influences from artists such as BB King and Ali Akbar Khan — has played a collection of Mahajan’s original compositions, as well as covers of Traditional Blues, Funk, and Soul music at numerous shows in the local and national circuits. “In this day and age of widespread commercialism and over processed music, the band focuses instead on live performance, songwriting and extended improvisation,” says the bio of his project .
Over time, even as the stray requests for Bollywood numbers in local nightclubs dwindled in proportion to rising awareness about Blues music, the band members grew closer. Today, the longtime players are attuned to each other’s quirks. Mahajan is now familiar with longtime drummer Siddharth Jain’s “pocket”.
Recently, this pocket surfaced in Lower Parel on January 16 at the Mahindra Blues Hunt which saw three bands that were shortlisted from a nationwide online contest that saw several aspirants upload videos of their acts for a chance to share the stage with global music legends. Musicians Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa made up the panel of judges at the event that witnessed the group — comprising Jain on drums, Gurpreet Kaur on vocals, Ravali Komanapally on keys, Tanisha Bhatnagar on bass and Mahajan on guitar — playing a cover song and two original compositions written by Mahajan.
(The Mahindra Blues Festival In Association with The Times of India co sponsored by Glenlivet Glassware and Promoted & Produced by Hyperlink Brand Solutions)