The third edition of the NCPA Soulful Blues Festival is the biggest so far, featuring three eminent musicians across three days. We chat with them about their journey to finding the blues and why it is more than a genre of music to them.

By Nidhi Lodaya

There is a collective sense of excitement—for the artistes, audiences and programmers—when a musician debuts in a country. This March marks the third consecutive year that the NCPA Soulful Blues will bring down blues musicians from across the world to sing their first tunes in India on the Tata Theatre stage. With a three-day line-up this year, the festival will see “King of the Blues” Alvon Johnson, Detroit’s “Queen of the Blues” Thornetta Davis and award-winning blues singer Tia Carroll.

Journey to the blues

To each of these artistes, the blues came differently and it was not the first genre with which they started their singing careers. Seventy-three-year old Alvon Johnson started out in a show band where eight musicians wore costumes, had a choreography routine to follow and travelled around the world. This was followed by a ‘Top 40s hits band’ but soon after, in the 1980s, the singer and guitarist thought it was time to try something new. “I decided to start playing the blues because I knew that it was part of my heritage, but I didn’t like it initially because it wasn’t fun and most of the subjects were depressing,” he says. However, determined to make a career as a musician in Los Angeles, Johnson studied the genre and listened to artistes like B. B. King, Z. Z. Hill and Albert King. He eventually became a full-time musician who performed with well-known bands such as The Drifters, The Coasters, The Shirelles and artistes like John Lee Hooker, Frankie Lee, Buddy Ace and more.

The Detroit-based blues singer Thornetta Davis, 61, started out singing in her school choir and some local bands. She admits that before performing the blues, she always looked at it as “old fashioned” and how it was her “mama’s music” but only when she was older, she started singing and making music from her life experiences. “I always felt like I didn’t relate to what I was singing then but blues is life music and eventually somewhere in your life you are going to have some blues [pun intended].”

Tia Carroll recalls singing anything and everything—right from songs on the radio to advertisements on TV. It was only in her late 20s that the Bay Area native started a 1950s theme band followed by singing covers of songs by rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Guns & Roses. She dabbled in a little bit of R&B, thanks to her idol Tina Turner, before she finally started singing the blues. “Honestly,” she says during a video call, “[singing] the blues was harder because I didn’t grow up listening [to this genre] and I didn’t know a lot about it.” But what made her keep going despite it being difficult was the wide acceptance of the delivery of her performance in the genre. Carroll is the only musician out of the three to have kept a full-time job in an accounts department alongside her music career. However, she never thought of both her jobs as opposite ends of the spectrum. “For some reason, my music is filtered into the accounting, and I think it is because of my voice that I had customers who would wait to not pay their bills because they wanted me to call them,” she muses.

Carroll, who has now become a full-time musician since retiring from her day job, considers the blues to be a “cup of joy that I get to carry around with me on every single stage and spill it into the audience.” Like any form of art, the genre is subjective. “I think with the blues, you can touch people. It is a cultural vehicle of expression,” shares Johnson. It is the kind of communication that transcends borders and language and evokes a feeling among people. For all three artistes, this is more than just a genre of music. “I know people assume that the music of the blues is sad, but I will say that my blues will uplift you,” says Davis who mainly writes songs about her life experiences. While the blues originated from songs of protest and sorrow, writing about one’s experience is perhaps the most accessible way for an artiste to express themselves. Johnson’s songs are also about love and relationships, but he confesses he wants to sing more about politics, inhumanity and injustice. “I do have a couple of protest songs and would like to talk about these issues,” he adds with a shy grin.

Staying relevant

In an age where the music available for consumption is limitless, it can get difficult for musicians to keep up with current trends and ways of working to stay as relevant as before. For Johnson, that means embracing all styles of music. He recalls receiving a useful piece of advice: Learn as many styles as possible because you never know what style of music you might have to involve yourself in.

Meanwhile, Davis and Carroll are adapting to the current standard of having a social media presence. “I try to stay on top of posting,” shares Carroll. “Back in the day, we used to put advertisements in different magazines and newspapers and while it seemed time-consuming, social media is triple the effort because there are so many platforms. You can’t just have one Facebook page. You have to have a fan page, a personal one and a page for your band as well with daily updates.” Davis, through her social media pages, has managed to tap into a much younger listenership. “My younger audience keeps telling me about a song they love and how their parents used to come to see me [perform].” For Carroll, using the internet also means taking help from AI. “I mean, I can write a song,” she laughs, “but writing about myself and urging people to come and attend my show is when I use AI.”

Beyond singing

Carroll, whose voice is often compared to legends like Tina Turner and Koko Taylor, says that she alters her set according to the venue. “You read the room. If it is a venue where people are sitting down and having dinner, I can pretty much do anything—a fast song, a slow one or even walk towards the audience and sing among them. But if it is a venue where people want to dance, then I play what keeps people on the dance floor.” Each musician has their own quirks that make their live performances stand out from the rest. Johnson takes his musicianship up a notch by also being a performer onstage. “When I listen to a blues song that other people have written, I try to figure out what they were thinking when they said that. I have the whole scenario in mind, and I try to act it out onstage and that is why I am considered to be a blues performer. I am not just standing there, playing the guitar and hollering in the mic. I am performing the song.”

Ahead of their debuts in India, all three artistes share a sense of excitement to be performing in a country they didn’t presume had an audience for the blues. Davis admits that she was amazed when she was approached by the NCPA to perform for the third edition of the Soulful Blues festival. “It’s a big deal for us. I am going to have my phone camera out as much as possible,” she jokes. “I love the fact that this voice lets me go outside my front door into someone else’s country to sing and entertain. It is a blessing,” Carroll muses. She recalls listening to Mumbai-born, Akarsha “Aki” Kumar, a blues musician based in San Jose, California, who is called the “King of Bollywood Blues” and is known for infusing blues, rock ‘n’ roll and country with Bollywood-inspired tunes. In addition to the late sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, Johnson is familiar with the music of bassist Mohini Dey who, besides playing with notable musicians in India, rose to international fame after joining Willow Smith’s band last year.

Collaboration and exposure to Indian culture and music is something all three award-winning musicians are looking forward to during their visit to Mumbai.

This article was originally published in the March 2025 issue of ON Stage.