The blues are alive

With a whole lot of south side grooves, guitar gumbo and big love from Buddy Guy, the Mahindra Blues Festival returns for its tenth edition. Here’s the story of how a few good men built the hottest juke joint this side of the Atlantic

- NIDHI GUPTA

There’s no blues artist anywhere in the world who hasn’t heard about the Mahindra Blues Festival by now,” VG Jairam says. “And that includes Eric Clapton.” Jairam, Co-founder of Oranjuice, the entertainment company that has organised the Mahindra Blues Festival since its inception in 2011, says this rather matter-of-factly. And he doesn’t even mean the calls that the festival team’s made to solicit the musician’s presence.

Clapton’s bandmate from Bluesbreakers, John Mayall, left deeply satisfied after his gig in 2018; while Buddy Guy, the last of the blues living legends and a “friend and mentor” to the festival, is famously relentless with his endorsement. “But to get someone of Clapton’s stature down here requires some cajoling, as you can imagine,” Jairam says, “and when he does agree, it’d be almost criminal to put him on a stage in Mehboob Studios!”

This explanation comes over a conference call with Jairam and Jay Shah, Head of Cultural Outreach at Mahindra Group; because I’ve asked (almost as a personal wish list) if they’d consider hosting artists like Alabama Shakes and Rag’n’Bone Man – artists that feature on the Billboard Hot 200 and are arguably taking the genre to more pop-oriented audiences.

“Of course, Alabama Shakes is on our radar,” Jairam says. “But there’s a lot that goes into that conversation. Sometimes it’s a question of whether it’s worth their time to fly around the world for 3,000 people in the audience. We might pull it off,” – like they did with the Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2014 – “but we do want to stay true to Chicago blues.”