This blues musician fled Russia for Serbia. But he sounds like he came straight from the Mississippi Delta.

Sergei Green, a classically trained pianist from St. Petersburg, Russia, has reinvented himself as a Delta blues musician in the small village of Bačka Topola, Serbia. Known as Sergei Gringo, he performs original compositions like "Lost and Homeless" and a blues opera titled *Tumbleweed*, which explores themes of heartbreak and wandering. Despite never visiting the United States, Green mastered English and the blues style by studying legends such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. He argues that the blues must be sung in English to maintain the "mystical relation" between the lyrics and the guitar, a quality he feels is lost when translated into Russian. Having left Russia in search of a more peaceful environment to pursue his art, Green now performs in local Serbian dive bars, finding a universal connection to a musical genre born thousands of miles away.