Aki Kumar’s Bollywood Blues (Part 1 of 2)

This feature first appeared in Living Blues.

Genre mashups are nothing new; for decades, musical artists have combined styles. In the process, some new forms have arisen: folk-rock, jazz fusion and so on. But in most cases, the traditions being combined have a common musical DNA, often traced back to Western music from Africa, Europe and/or North America. In that respect, Aki Kumar is an outlier. His brand of the blues is informed by greats like Little Walter, but it’s also indelibly suffused with the character of his native India. The result is a sound that’s familiar and exotic all at once.

Aki Kumar was born and raised in Mumbai, nearly 9,000 miles from the Mississippi River Delta. But his love for (and understanding of) the blues is heartfelt and genuine. “My parents were the primary source of my musical inspiration,” he says. “They were not musicians, but they loved music.” Kumar’s father worked a government job, and his mother – a former teacher – was a stay-at-home mom. “They never really got an outlet for their artistic pursuits,” Kumar explains. But he recalls that he and his older brother always heard their mom singing around the house. “And our dad loved music; he listened to everything.”

The Kumars didn’t often have extra disposable income for luxuries like records, but when he could, Aki’s father would purchase select titles. “Once every three or four months he would go to a record meet in Mumbai, and he’d buy something: Mozart, or some Hindustani Indian classical music,” Kumar recalls.

There was a sampling of international pop music in the Kumar household as well. Aki says that his family’s collection didn’t number much in excess of 30 records, but it was a wonderfully varied lot: “Stevie Wonder, John Denver, a great Beatles compilation; for me as a kid, some of the best stuff.”

But there were no blues records in the Kumar household; the American musical form was unknown to young Aki. “In India, if you were musically aware, Bollywood music was the constant in the soundscape,” he says. “We had one TV station in the ‘80s, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that India’s economy opened up.” He laughs and admits, “I had no idea that the blues was even a genre until I moved to the U.S.!”

As a young man, Kumar developed a keen perspective on global sociopolitical issues. But he didn’t have an outlet to express those ideas; that would come after he established himself as a musician. First, though, he focused on his education.

“My parents came from a very economically distressed background,” he says, explaining that many people in India use education as a means to lift themselves out of that situation. So both he and his brother pursued higher education in the U.S. “I [first] ended up in Oklahoma,” Kumar says, “because that was the cheapest place for me to go.” Studying computer science and software engineering, he eventually transferred to San Jose State University, from which he graduated. “And I’ve stayed here,” he says with pride. “I’ve lived here 26 years now.”

In between his studies, Kumar indulged his passion for music. The harmonica was sometimes featured in Bollywood music, so he was familiar with the instrument. But when he heard harmonica on an old John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers record, he became even more interested. “It was in a Sonny Boy Williamson style,” Kumar says, “though I didn’t know that at the time.”

Kumar was entranced. “I thought, ‘So this small thing can make all of that sound? I don’t know how they do it, but I’m going to find somebody who can show me.’” He signed up for lessons from blues harmonica educator (and founder of San Jose-based School of the Blues) David Barrett. Kumar’s instructor suggested that he check out a local band playing Chicago-style blues. He did, and that was his first exposure to the music of Jimmy Reed. “I remember that the whole thing consumed me,” Kumar says. “The groove, the sound, the tonality.” That experience led him down a path of exploration, focusing on traditional blues.

Kumar took his studies very seriously. “I come from a background where you study; it’s just what you do,” he says. Woodshedding on his own, he developed skills on a variety of blues harps. Kumar notes a lesson he learned early from Barrett: “In the blues world, every harmonica is different; you have to dial in your technique to work on each one.”

He was struck in particular by the powerful characters in the blues, greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Parker. “They were experimental in a way that’s a little ‘punk,’” he suggests. “And then you had young geniuses like Little Walter.” He also immersed himself in the music of a later generation of players that would include Charlie Musselwhite and Paul Butterfield. “They inherited from the masters,” Kumar emphasizes.

Around 2008, he earned his so-called Green Card, giving him the right to live and work permanently in the United States. After working in the tech world for a decade, now he could start playing gigs. “I’m a naturalized citizen now, but I’m still terrified coming back to the U.S. from overseas,” he says. But even in the years before government-encouraged antipathy toward foreigners and immigrants, Kumar was hesitant. So having that Green Card made him feel a little more confident.

Way back during his Mumbai childhood, Kumar had been gently prodded by his mom to put himself in front of an audience. “Even if I was seven and it was a stage play, she encouraged me,” he says. Those early experiences onstage served him well in the 21^st century when he started singing and playing harmonica with local Bay Area bands.

Kumar recalls an early gig. “It wasn’t even a group, because I fell in with them right before they disbanded,” he says. “But it was great, because I got to do all those things: learn where to park the car, pull the amp out, drag it on the sidewalk, put it up on the stage, dial it in. I had never done any of those things!”

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