Who is Happy Mayfield? Is he a rapper? A pariah? Does he rock diamonds or sweaters?

It's useless. We aren't who we say we are. And why should we be?

Happy Mayfield is about getting happy. Indulging in conflicting tastes—with precision. Come on, lift your own voice and depart the age of irony. Right Now!

The collaboration started a decade ago in a Sacramento High School classroom.

Lee Bob Watson was a musician but he was also a substitute teacher and, sometimes between classes, he found himself talking music with one of his students.

That student, Derek Taylor, had a band called Bucho and he invited Watson to come check them out sometime.

Watson did and, now 10 years later, the teacher and the student are bandmates in Happy Mayfield.

The four-piece, based in Sacramento and San Francisco, connects its members' electric influences to craft an oddly compelling hybrid of folk, soul, hip-hop, world beat and rock.

For Watson, who's played with the likes of Jackpot and recently released a solo album, it's an affirmation of how music can define your life. The birth of Happy Mayfield, he says, came at a point when he'd started to question the very act of making music. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.