{"id":31048,"date":"2026-05-22T05:30:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T09:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=31048"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:37:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:37:44","slug":"aki-kumars-bollywood-blues-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/aki-kumars-bollywood-blues-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Aki Kumar\u2019s Bollywood Blues (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Still, he had to overcome some hurdles. \u201cOne of those was my accent,\u201d he admits. \u201cAnother was that as an international person, you\u2019re preemptively perceived as an outsider: not a \u2018real American,\u2019 singing American music to people who are very well-versed in it.\u201d But he worked hard at his vocals, harmonica and stagecraft, winning over audiences.<\/p>\n

At his day job, he found tech work mind-numbing. \u201cYou\u2019re basically sitting on a chair, scrolling through 10,000 lines of [software] code that you didn\u2019t write \u2013 that were written in 1994 by some guy much smarter than you \u2013 and you’re trying to find the two lines in there that are causing a problem,\u201d he explains with a laugh. \u201cThe one great thing was that I was able to listen to Little Walter [on headphones] all day.\u201d As his music career picked up steam, Kumar quit his tech job, devoting his passions full time to the blues.<\/p>\n

With blues band Tip of the Top, Kumar released Depot Street Blues<\/i> in 2009, followed by Rock Tonight<\/i> (2010) and 2011\u2019s From Memphis to Greaseland<\/i>, recorded at Kid Andersen\u2019s famed studio in San Jose. In 2014 he released his solo debut, Don\u2019t Hold Back<\/i>; that record was followed up months later by It Takes Three<\/i>, a collaboration with Gary Smith and Kumar\u2019s teacher David Barrett.<\/p>\n

By the time he signed with Little Village in 2016, Kumar had developed a way to incorporate the sounds, sensibilities and atmosphere of his Indian heritage into the blues idiom. The result was 2016\u2019s Aki Goes to Bollywood<\/i>. Another album for Little Village, Hindi Man Blues<\/i> built on that hybrid foundation; it won effusive praise in the pages of Living Blues<\/i>, Downbeat<\/i> and other publications.<\/p>\n

In 2021, hometown paper San Jose Mercury News<\/i> described Kumar as the Bay Area\u2019s \u201creigning king of Bollywood blues.\u201d While that label conveniently overlooked the fact that there weren\u2019t many (if any) other artists exploring that particular style of music, the praise was genuine. In 2024, Kumar and his band won a Metro Silicon Valley<\/i> readers\u2019 poll, earning the distinction of Best Local Band.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like popularity contests,\u201d Kumar says. \u201cBut it felt great, because I work very hard in the Bay Area scene.\u201d Kumar plays between 150 and 200 shows a year; \u201cI keep the band working,\u201d he says.
\nOne of the most recent fruits of his hard work is Kumar\u2019s fourth album for Little Village, the sardonically-titled God Bless the USA<\/i>. With this release, Kumar found an outlet to express his passionate views on issues of social and political importance. And while its title might suggest some kind of jingoistic paean to conservative talking points, God Bless the USA<\/i> is something else entirely.<\/p>\n

Kumar explains that the title is an intentional red herring. \u201cThat\u2019s the point: to draw people in out of curiosity,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the message is clear once you listen to the [title] track. And the song mentions the USA, but the truth is that the [message] of the song \u2013 about the class divide and this era of hyper-greed \u2013 apply across the universe. And I wanted it to have a hook, so everybody can sing along in an ironic way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Against a backbeat that suggests a Celtic waltz played by an Americana\/rock ensemble, in \u201cGod Bless the USA\u201d Kumar sings in a voice halfway between earnestness and sarcasm: \u201cThe rich shall inherit the Earth; that\u2019s what our scriptures say. You\u2019re measured by your money\u2019s worth; God bless the USA.\u201d
\nAki Kumar makes his position plain throughout the album. \u201cThoughts and Prayers\u201d is a likely-apocryphal tale of writing a letter to the president pleading for action to prevent school shooting, and receiving a reply offering instead merely thoughts and prayers. The tune\u2019s musical backing has a classic pop feel reminiscent of Toots Thielemans, with a subtle gospel feel applied to its modern blues foundation.<\/p>\n

God Bless the USA<\/i> also features what might be thought of as an unusual choice of covers. Punk heroes the Clash featured \u201cShould I Stay or Should I Go\u201d on their 1981 album Combat Rock<\/i>. And while guitarist and songwriter Joe Strummer shied away from making claims about its lyrical significance, the song seems custom-made to be sung by an immigrant worried about his status in the Trump-era United States.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the approach that Kumar takes on his reading of the Clash gem. With a loping blues backing, he reinvents the song, giving it a feel that\u2019s classic blues, but with a vocal emphasis that leans into the uncertainty that plagues many in the U.S. who might not have been born here.<\/p>\n

The Indian instrumentation of Kumar\u2019s \u201cDesi Strut\u201d effectively bridges East and West, with a sound that suggests both The Meters and Ravi Shankar. But then that approach is a central theme of God Bless the USA<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Kumar produced God Bless the USA<\/i> on his own, working at home. \u201cI have a great studio \u2013 Greaseland, just a hop away from where I live,\u201d he says; that\u2019s where most of his earlier albums had been cut. \u201cBut when the pandemic hit, I had to do a bunch of live streaming, so I set up a studio in my garage.\u201d With a laugh, Kumar admits that said \u201cstudio\u201d was really just \u201ca bunch of my gig mics placed on top of the amplifiers, with two over the drum kit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with home studio software GarageBand, Kumar recorded all of the 13-song album\u2019s harmonica, and lead vocals, plus a good bit of percussion. He brought in a dozen hand-picked musicians to provide, guitar, bass, keys, saxophone, tabla, khanjira, and sitar. The resulting album bears none of the homespun hallmarks of a DIY effort; it\u2019s a superbly-produced and -played collection of songs that synthesize his love of the blues with his Indian roots.<\/p>\n

While Aki Kumar\u2019s latest album is superbly effective at delivering pointed sociopolitical commentary, its complementary strength is its showcasing of his skill at combining musical styles that \u2013 on paper, at least \u2013 shouldn’t fit together seamlessly. But in his creative hands, with God Bless the USA<\/i> Aki Kumar has found a way to bring Bollywood flavor to the blues, and do it in a way that sounds like the most natural thing in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Still, he had to overcome some hurdles. \u201cOne of those was my accent,\u201d he admits. \u201cAnother was that as an international person, you\u2019re preemptively perceived as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,49,76],"tags":[5708],"class_list":["post-31048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-new-release","category-world","tag-aki-kumar","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-76-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31052,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31048\/revisions\/31052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}