“Blues is all about emotions, about the basic needs of love, happiness, heartbreak,” says Coco Montoya, leaning back into the plush sofa chair as he pauses to collect his thoughts. We’re on a first-floor balcony at the Trident hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex, and Montoya looks relaxed and completely in his element, unperturbed by the motley group of PR people, reporters and assorted hangers-on buzzing about like a swarm of media-bite hungry bees. A few feet away, wrapped up in conversation with another journalist, sits his old friend and band leader John Mayall, whom Montoya played with for a decade in the 1980s before striking out as a solo musician. The two blues veterans — along with fellow blues legend Walter “Wolfman” Washington and relative newcomer Layla Zoe — are here to do a quick round of press the morning ahead of their performances at the eighth edition of the Mahindra Blues Festival. Montoya takes a quick sip of water before turning his attention back to our conversation. “When you hear this music, it really affects your heart more than your head. And I think that emotional connection is what keeps bringing people back to the blues. And I think that will be the attraction of the blues forever.”

At a time when guitar music — much of it built on the foundation of the blues — is in global retreat, having lost its primacy in popular music to the synths and sampling techniques of hip-hop and electronica, this might seem like an optimistic sentiment. But if the packed crowd at Bandra’s Mehboob Studios over the past weekend is anything to go by, there’s reason to believe in the resilience of the blues. Thousands of people, ranging from corporate honchos, ageing hippies, mutton-chop sporting rock-and-roll holdovers, and even a decent-sized contingent of teenagers thronged the two stages to watch Montoya, Mayall and company spin their magic. They clapped and danced and sang along to songs from halfway across the world, written before many of them were born. Blues music may not be as dominant as it was in the 1960s and ’70s, but it continues to grow and thrive. And in India, much of the credit for that goes to the Mahindra Blues Festival.

Appropriately enough, the festival owes its origins to the farms and plantations of the Mississippi delta, where the blues were born. In 2011, the automobile manufacturing company Mahindra & Mahindra was looking for ways to connect with the farmers of the American south, the primary consumers for their tractors. “We’d already been in the US market for a couple of years, and we were the number one tractor manufacturer in the world at that point, but we were finding it difficult to break into the psychology of the American consumer,” explains Jay Shah, head of cultural outreach at the Mahindra group. Forging cultural connections, they hoped, would succeed where advertising failed. They considered many possibilities, including country music, line-dancing and bull-fighting. “We settled on the blues because it was an art form that was born in that region and really is the foundation of all American music, pre-dating even jazz.”

But the blues market in the US was saturated. “So we decided to take a leap of faith and do a blues festival in Mumbai, because we saw a natural connection with the blues,” says Shah. “The spirit of Mumbai, which is so seemingly full of pathos, of people struggling all- day long, but, at the end of it, there’s still a smile on their faces. And the blues, although it’s an art form that talks about strife and struggle, is still kind of a celebration of the human condition, much like Mumbai.”

When the festival started in 2011, the blues scene in India was pretty stagnant. While rock, electronica and even jazz had their own venues, festivals and growing fan bases, little attention was being paid to the blues, with only a handful of artists keeping the scene afloat — Soulmate, Lou Majaw, Blackstratblues. “The Mahindra Blues Fest is what, I think, in a way rejuvenated the blues scene in India,” says VG Jairam, co-founder of Oranjuice Entertainment, organisers of the festival since its inception. “Blues really got a lot more visibility with this fest. And while the bulk of our audience is over 30, we’ve noticed a lot of youngsters coming in and they now understand that the blues is the source code. There’s a lot of education that’s going on, with so many global legends coming down.”

If there is a discordant note, it’s the fact that over eight years, the Indian slots on the main stage have largely been the preserve of two acts — Shillong blues veterans Soulmate, and Blackstratblues, the solo project of former Zero guitarist Warren Mendonsa. Recognising this, the organisers started the Mahindra Blues Band Hunt in 2015, and each year the winner gets to perform to the same audience on the garden stage. But none have yet transitioned to the two main stages. This year, the only Indian act on the main stage was, once again, Blackstratblues. “We’d love to see more Indian acts, but we also have to ensure that whoever we put up there is at the top of the game,” explains Jairam. “With the band hunt, we’re giving young acts a platform to play alongside global giants and be mentored by people like Ehsaan (Noorani) and Loy (Mendonsa). I see a lot of dynamism and talent in the younger groups, and, with time, I’m sure they’ll be ready for the main stage.”

Bhanuj Kappal is a Mumbai-based writer

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