American Blues meets Retro Indian Pop! Aki Goes To Bollywood is a highly entertaining act fronted by dynamic, charismatic and hard-hitting blues singer/harmonica player Aki Kumar and featuring some of the most talented blues musicians from the West Coast. This outfit delivers true, cross-cultural music and is the only one of it's kind in the whole world.
Saturday, May 5, 2018 at 8pm
at Piedmont Piano Company
1728 San Pablo Ave. (at 18th), Oakland, CA
$20 - To reserve tickets with your credit card, please call (510) 547-8188
Aki Kumar is no stranger to living double lives. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, the pursuit of a college degree in the USA landed him at San Jose State in California in 1999, followed by a steady “day job” as a software engineer. But, by night, Aki had begun exploring and hanging out at blues clubs in the SF Bay Area, and was especially drawn to the wailing, toneful sound of the blues harmonica. He soon began performing his own brand of Chicago blues at local venues and is now hailed as one of the top rising stars of the West Coast Blues scene. 2016 marked a milestone for Aki - a moment in time where he had spent half his life in India and half in the United States. His 2016 debut album for Little Village Foundation, Aki Goes To Bollywood, is a true representation of his musical DNA — classic 1950s/60s Bollywood and down-home American blues.
Though some instrumental albums and DJs have attempted to rearrange Bollywood music mixed with other genres, never before has an Indian blues musician so triumphantly recorded songs by the film industry’s biggest stars such as Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, R.D. Burman, and S.D. Burman. Aki Kumar notes, “I realized that many of the Indian songs I loved had, in fact, been influenced by American blues music and I wanted to bring them together.” Aki Goes To Bollywood blends sitars with Delta blues jams, Hindi vocals with ferocious harp playing. Aki has single-handedly created Mumbai Meets Muddy, his own blues movement. akikumar.com | akigoestobollywood.com