Aki Kumar

Akarsha "Aki" Kumar (born 1980) is an Indian-born blues musician now living in San Jose, California. After working at a technology job, he is now a harmonica player and vocalist.

Early life, education, and former career Kumar was born and grew up in Mumbai, where his parents' upbringing and eclectic tastes—his father was a Kannadiga, his mother a Telugu—exposed him to a broad range of sounds—everything from rock 'n' roll and pop to the more traditional sounds of Bollywood film scores and Indian classical music. In his youth, he studied both keyboards and tabla, and acquired his first harmonica from his father.

He moved to the US in 1998 to study computer science, initially in Oklahoma City and then at San Jose State University in Silicon Valley. He was first attracted to American oldies radio, and then discovered the blues by visiting nightclubs and bars in the Bay Area. Soon after completing a degree, he went to work at Adobe. He turned to music full-time after Adobe eliminated his department and laid him off in 2013.

Music career Kumar's harmonica playing is rooted in the classical style invented by Little Walter and others, but his blues style is eclectic.

His second effort, Aki Goes to Bollywood (2016), on blues man's Jim Pugh's Little Village Foundation label, fuses Chicago blues and Bollywood music. The cover art resembles graphics on a Bollywood movie poster. and a single, Zindagi, on Little Village in 2021.

Kumar mainly performs around the San Francisco Bay Area with his quartet, hosts blues jams, and works as a session musician. He performed at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in 2016 and 2018.