The all-star jam at Mahindra Blues Festival 2025 in Mumbai. Photo: Mahindra Blues Festival
This annual festival is well and truly embedded in the minds and social calendars of knowledgeable Mumbaikars. The two-day Mahindra Blues festival on Feb. 8 and 9, 2025 at Bandra’s Mehboob Studios bore ample testimony to this.
It is no longer a surprise that the Mahindra Blues Festival (MBF) is very well attended by those wanting both music and entertainment. Friends gather to socialize, eat, drink and generally make merry. In a city that offers so many varied cultural choices and diversions to its citizens, this festival never takes a back seat when it comes to attracting a crowd. It is akin to a mela with folks coming to it from all over, and unlike the one being celebrated in Prayagraj at this moment, the annual MBF mela is not held once every 12 years!
This year, each band on show was excellent and added to the overall high standard of the music.
Curating a music festival is a complicated matter. There is an ocean of talent available for selection; finding not just musicians of quality but also striking a balance between them to get a proper mix is a fine art. To have achieved this balance so well in a long string of Mahindra Blues Festivals is no mean feat for its organizers and curators.
We found the lack of “headliners” at this MBF to be no handicap at all. Each band brought a different flavor and feel to add up to an overall enjoyable experience.
The blues have their origin in the roots of African American culture and have emerged over the last hundred-plus years as a major musical art form. The blues are now played everywhere.
At the MBF ‘25 we heard the Teskey Brothers from Australia as one of the leading acts of the festival. Taj Farrant, a 15-year-old guitarist, also from Australia was scheduled to feature at this year’s event but was unable to travel to India for personal reasons. In addition, we had two artists from India who displayed their talents – Megan Murray and Kanchan Daniel. It made for a diverse, international lineup. We remember Ivan Singh, a blues singer from Argentina also performing at the MBF a couple of years ago.
In short “the Blues are everywhere.”
Kanchan Daniel and her band opened the two-day festival with a highly pleasing set to a large turnout of listeners.
But for us, Ruthie Foster from Austin, Texas in the U.S. who played with her band on day 1 was the person who made the most impact at MBF25.
Foster embodied the spirit of this wonderful music art form. Undoubtedly, her roots in church and gospel music run deep within her and she took us through some rousing performances on day 1, “taking us to church” as it were.
The last-minute withdrawal of Taj Farrant was a blessing in disguise for those who wanted to hear more from Ruthie Foster. Her band was requested to fill the breach and day 2 saw them back on stage.
Foster came up with a completely different set of music – both in content and style from day 1. She has just won a Grammy for her album Mileage and now she won many hearts in Mumbai. If music is communication, Ruthie got to many hearts with her twin performances. She demonstrated how closely the blues are related to the sounds of gospel, rock, R&B and jazz genres of African American music.
From down under, Australia, came the Teskey Brothers, a rock/blues band led by brothers Sam Teskey, who plays lead guitar and Josh Teskey, an exponent of the rhythm guitar and vocals. They performed on the opening night of the festival and vibed well with the audience. The beauty of the “blues” expression is that it almost seamlessly caters to adherents of classic rock as well as to those of the traditional blues form, creating a large, receptive audience. The Teskey Brothers band thus appealed to a large spectrum of the audience.
Robert Randolph is a veteran at the Mahindra Blues Festival, although he last played here 12 years ago. A year before that, he had been invited by Buddy Guy as a guest on the legend’s set.
This time around, Randolph led his own band and highlighted his unique lap steel guitar, using a slide bar against the plucked strings. It delivers a sound capable of mimicking a human voice with its smooth, continuous notes. This instrument in the hands of Robert Randolph dominated his set.
Robert Randolph cleverly uses the slide in the expression of his music. His high-energy vocals are a rock & roller’s delight and the large audience grooved to his sounds.
One has heard Megan Murray perform earlier in Mumbai, including once at Lollapalooza India, but this singer-songwriter and blues exponent has seldom performed at the level she achieved at this year’s MBF. Perhaps a combination of occasion and experience took her to a higher level of performance. Her band was well in sync with her and it made for an impressive debut at this festival.
The appearance of so many blues greats at the MBF over the years has resulted in the process of osmosis; young local talent has imbibed the lingo of the blues and it was certainly evident at the festival this year from the performances of Kanchan Daniel and Megan Murray.
We predict that in a short time, a full-blown Indian blues festival of international standard will take place at the Mehboob Studios and nobody will miss the international artists!