1ST ANNIVERSARY ISSUE!

LEILA
JANAH
CAN THE SOCIAL
ENTREPRENEUR SAVE
THE WORLD THROUGH
TECH & BEAUTY?

SPRING
FASHION
ROYAL GARMENTS FOR MODERN TIMES
5 MUST-KNOW LOCAL DESIGNERS
WHERE TO GET THE SEASONS BEST LOOKS

PLUS
BONA FIDE BLUES: HOW THE VALLEY
BECAME AN UNLIKELY MUSIC MECCA
M O D E R N L U X U R Y. C O M
A QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN GENRE OF MUSIC IS FLOURISHINGAND CONTINUING TO EVOLVEIN THE VALLEY.

BY ANDREW GILBERT
 Aki Kumar, who has
described himself as
the only Bombay
blues man, performs
at Little Lous BBQ in
Campbell, one of his
regular venues.
PHOTO BY RACHEL KUMAR

funny thing happened on the way to
Silicon Valley becoming the global
center of the digital revolution.
While producing disruptive
tech nolog ie s t hat have
upended one industr y
after another, the region
has become a thriving
hub for A mericas
most enduring and
influential indigenous art form: the blues. And
the world is taking note.
In January, The Blues Foundation, the
Memphis-based organization that presents the
genres most prestigious awards, announced
nominations for the 2017 honors, and three Bay
Area women are in the running. San Joses Lara
Price is up for female soul blues artist of the year.
Powerhouse Oakland vocalist Terrie Odabiwas
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M O D E R N L U X U R Y S I L I C O N VA L L E Y M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 7
Drummer Derrick
DMAR Martin
during a weekly
Club Fox Blues Jam
in Redwood City
tapped for female soul blues artist of the year
and best new artist debut. And Oakland
saxophonist Nancy Wright is a contender
for best instrumentalist. All three women
are first-time nominees and released albums
last year recorded and produced by guitarist
Christoffer Kid Andersen at his Greaseland
Studios. The San Jose recording facility has
made such a potent impression that The Blues
Foundation bestowed Andersen with a 2017
Keeping the Blues Alive Award.
Veteran Bay Area blues players increasingly
flock to the South Bay to record at Greaseland and
perform in clubs like San Joses Poor House Bistro,
Campbells Little Lous BBQ and Redwood Citys
Club Fox, while musicians around the country are
wondering whether to pack up and head west. If
the renaissance has gone largely unnoticed outside
of blues circles, well, its a cultural treasure thats
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used to being overlooked and undervalued. Despite
serving as the foundational stream for almost every
American pop music current of the 20th century
from jazz, R&B and Broadway show tunes to rock
n roll, country music and hip-hopthe blues
today occupies a small and neglected niche of the
music market.
In other words, shifting the blues center of
gravity south from Oakland and San Francisco
doesnt require heavy lifting. In order to move
it from one place to another, you need about a
medium-size truck, or maybe a 10-seat van, says
the Norwegian-born Andersen, who cut his teeth
backing touring American blues artists on the
active Oslo scene before relocating to California
in 2001. When I came here it seemed like there
was a remnant of a scene, particularly around
the Poor House Bistro, which is a fantastic club.
Whats happening now is theres this sense all over
the world that the South Bay is happening.
Andersen had been angling for a gig that
would bring him to the United States for years.
IT ONLY TAKES A FEW
PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY
GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO
TO BUILD A SCENE.
-ROCKIN JOHNNY BURGIN
He finally found the ticket via veteran blues
saxophonist and vocalist Terry Hanck, who was
based in Santa Cruz at the time and in need of a
guitarist. In 2001, it wasnt an obvious choice for a
gifted and ambitious young European blues player
to move to Northern California, but Andersen says
hed been paying attention to what was going
on in various places in the U.S. I dug what I was
hearing on the West Coast, while most things out
of Chicago had taken place decades before. I did
get an offer from a guy in Chicago, but he had just
finished a four-year prison stint for shooting his old
guitar player, so I passed on that.
These days, when Andersen isnt recording
projects at Greaseland, he can be found on the
road with Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, a long-
running gig that has earned him four consecutive
Blues Awards nominations for best guitarist.
Part of why hes thrived on the South Bay scene
is his flexibility. The region isnt associated with
a particular blues style, like the searing Chicago
sound, Oaklands funk-laden East Bay grease DERRICK DMAR MARTIN PHOTO BY BRUCE FRAM
or the laid-back jazzy West Coast approach that
emanated from Los Angeles. Instead, the scene
reflects Silicon Valleys entrepreneurial ethos,
in that some of the key movers and shakers are
immigrants like Andersen, artists drawn here by
the sense of boundless possibilities. No player has
garnered more attention over the past year than
harmonica player Aki Kumar, who gave up his tech
day job in 2013 to focus on music full time.
 Born and raised in Mumbai, India, he grew
up hearing a global array of sounds, from John
Denver and Mozart to Bollywood hits. He studied
classical North Indian vocals for several years as an
adolescent and played around with an inexpensive
Chinese-made tremolo harmonica as a teen. But
Kumar never had a chance to hear the blues until
he moved to the United States in 1998 at the age of
18 to attend college in Oklahoma City. Before the
year was out, he transferred to San Jose State and
found work as a software engineer after graduation.
Listening to oldies radio, he gradually
discovered the blues when he sought out the
roots of doowop and early rock n roll hits that
caught his ear. Coming to the music without
preconceptions, he was struck by its emotional
intensity and rhythmic drive. I didnt have any
sense of, this is cool, or this is not cool, Kumar
says. I was in my 20s, not looking to be part
of a clique. I heard the music and it was great.
He spent several years taking classes at
David Barretts School of the Blues in San
Jose, and the veteran harmonica player turned
Kumar on to Chicago harp masters like Little
Walter, James Cotton and George Smith.
Barrett nurtured Kumars budding talent by
emphasizing the importance of getting together
with fellow students to perform, and before long,
he started sitting in at local jam sessions.
Making a name for himself as a rapidly
developing player with a communitarian ethos,
Kumar has played an essential role in building the
South Bay scene. Hes helped turn the Thursday
night session at Little Lous into the liveliest jam
in the region and recently launched a Tuesday
night jam at the Poor House Bistro, where the
international reach of the blues is often on full
display, with visiting musicians from Russia, Brazil
and Chile dropping by to sit in.
In April Ill be playing with guys from
Finland, Ku ma r says. T his mu sic is
supercompelling. It has an instant appeal, and
people from outside the U.S. come in without
biases and filters. Its pretty common across
the world that people dont appreciate what
they have at home, and the truth is, the blues
isnt represented in the media here. You have
LARA PRICE PHOTO BY RYAN LUFKINS
to go out of your way to find it.
The blues scene sometimes takes a self-
defeating attitude by policing the borders
stylistically, but Kumar has found a great deal
of support as hes honed a highly personal genre-
expanding repertoire. He gained international
attention with his 2016 album, Aki Goes to
Bollywood, a deliriously inventive mashup of blues
grooves and Hindi film themes by composers
such as R.D. Burman (Janu Meri Jaan) as well
as Anand and Milind (Eena Meena Deeka).
Recorded at Greaseland, naturally, the project has
found fans among Bollywood aficionados, blues
lovers and people with ears attuned to unusual sonic
hybrids. Encouraged by the overwhelming
response, Kumar is busy working on a follow-
up, which will have a lot more originals, he
says. Ive got songs Ive written in Hindi in
the same spirit of fusion insanity.
While Andersen and Kumar are breathing
new life into the South Bay scene, this isnt the
first time the blues have boomed here. Guitarist,
vocalist and stalwart bandleader J.C. Smith came
up during the 1980s, when the nightclub JJs
Blues kick-started a vital scene presenting local
players and guitar legends like Albert King and
Albert Collins. Smith had grown up in San Jose
hearing his Arkansas-born father play stinging
blues licks on his guitar, lines hed honed since
the 1920s entertaining customers of his bustling
moonshine business. Though only a few South
Bay venues focused on the blues in the 80s, the
music was a regular part of the rotation at an
array of night spots. When the news started
getting around, guys would start coming up from
L.A. and doing gigs all around the South Bay,
Smith recalls. Big Bob Coronas Keystone was
my second home for a long time. You could see
guys like Albert King, Gregg Allman and Johnny
Winter, who halfway lived in the place.
One reason the South Bay scene has taken
off again is that the blues abhor a vacuum. The
advent of the Great Recession in 2008 forced Tom
Mazzolini to close the world-famous San Francisco
Blues Festival, which had run for nearly four
decades. The demise of the Monterey Blues Festival
in 2012 was another body blow. These days, the
2017 Blues Music Award
nominee Lara Price onstage
(center) at Club Fox
M O D E R N L U X U R Y S I L I C O N VA L L E Y M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 7
LISTEN UP
Head to these local venues to
catch a live blues show.
Aptos Street BBQ
8059 Aptos St., Aptos,
831.662.1721, aptosstbbq.com
Club Fox
2209 Broadway St., Redwood City,
650.334.1153, clubfoxrwc.com
Don Quixotes
6275 Highway 9, Felton,
831.603.2294, donquixotesmusic.info
JJs Blues
3439 Stevens Creek Blvd., San Jose,
408.386.1500, jjsblues.net
Little Lous BBQ
Campbell Plaza, 2455 Winchester Blvd.,
Campbell, 408.356.5768, littlelousbbq.com
Mission St. BBQ
1618 Mission St., Santa Cruz,
831.458.2222, missionstbbq.com
Poor House Bistro
91 S. Autumn St., San Jose, 408.292.5837,
poorhousebistro.com
Smoking Pig BBQ
3340 Mowry Ave., Fremont, 510.713.1854,
smokingpigbbq.net
summer Redwood CityPAL Blues, Music, Arts
& BBQ Festival is one of the regions best, along
with San Joses Fountain Blues Festival, which Ted
Gehrke has somehow managed to keep afloat at
Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park after skipping several
years (its next scheduled for June 24).
The surest sign of the scenes health is that
established players have been drawn to the area.
Guitarist Big Jon Atkinson, a rising star in his mid-
20s who plays with Kim Wilson, recently moved up
from Southern California. And Chicago guitarist
Rockin Johnny Burgin, one of the Windy Citys
most celebrated bandleaders of the 90s, put his
career back on track after eight years off the scene
with his 2014 album, Greetings From Greaseland.
He was so taken with the South Bay action that he
moved here last year after several trips to perform
around the region with Kumar.
It only takes a few people who are really good
at what they do to build a scene, Burgin says. Like
in a restaurant, Aki is the outside man. Hes a great
front man whos good at making things happen.
And Kids in the back of the house, a great engineer
and musician. They started their own thing doing
really quality work, and it became something that
people jumped on.
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