Making headlines is the Mahindra Blues Festival year-on-year is the fact that India has a blues scene going on! After all, there have been headlining artists who have performed at the festival in the past like Buddy Guy and Joss Stone in the not so recent past. I remember Buddy Guy leaving the stage and walking to the audience with his guitar. And then I also heard Soulmate from Shillong in India and I am sure there will be more upcoming jazz and blues bands.

This year, the opening act at Mahindra Blues was by Arinjoy Trio for an hour with old and new tracks from their new album that was released the same evening. Arinjoy Trio were winners of a contest and Arinjoy Sarkar also played a guitar solo from ‘Nothing good is ever gonna last.’ ‘Just your alibi’ and ‘Now I think I’m done’ were new songs from the new album. He said that the lyrics were inspired by Eric Clapton and Robert Craig. Then dedicating an instrumental to his favourite musician Kirk Fletcher and performing their last track ‘Who you are’ before wrapping up the gig.

The audience got bigger when the big boys took on to the stage with their harmonica cases. Brandon Santini from Memphis started his performance with the song ‘Don’t come around here’ followed by a song from his newly released album ‘The Longshot.’ “I was raised in North Carolina and I got my first harmonica at the age of 15,” said Brandon when he began. He relocated to Memphis and founded Delta Highway in 2003. From Memphis, he took the audience on another journey to the South, to Mississippi, to Louisiana via Highway 61 and began the song, “Down to New Orleans.” And if you haven’t been to New Orleans or NOLA – where the jazz scene really was and is until today, then you can hear it in the lyrics – “Shake that umbrella below the Mardi Gras.”

No stranger to the blues is Charlie Musselwhite, who unlike Brandon Santini, travelled from Memphis to Chicago. When he went to Chicago in 1967, he was a stranger there, said Charlie. Therefore, calling his first album ‘Stranger to my land.’ Later in the performance, Charlie Musselwhite was joined by Brandon Santini to perform the song 'Help me.' In case you didn’t notice, both men were wearing rings with a blue stone – a signature style of blues artists, we think.

This was an exclusive evening attended by blues fans across India but when will more Indians get to watch gigs by International artists for free. Both Chicago and New Orleans have open stages at week-long music festivals for young people and people of almost all age-groups take to the streets – entertaining both tourists and locals. A future-ready festival will need to go to the people than bringing people to festivals. Just a thought.

Photo Credit: Mahindra Blues and Interactif.

Hope you liked our feature on Mahindra Blues 2019. Do send in your thoughts via email to shveta@interactif.in