Even in casual conversation, Danny Katz entertains. His voice doesn't just speak, it croons with comedic pacing, imitations and abrupt shifts in tone. He peppers his speech with accents, New York City slang, Japanese formalities or onomatopoeia.

Katz, 35, admits that his voice was also a weapon in his years as a Manhattan paralegal in the highly combative world of intellectual property law. And it's his voice that effortlessly bridges his multiple identities and varied worlds — as a Jewish Japanese-American, as a folksy musician, as a legal assistant in Tokyo's realm of corporate law and in the alleyways and byways of the underground international music scene.

Ironically, Katz remained voiceless until he was 4 years old: "My mom tried her darnedest to speak to me in Japanese and my dad in English, but apparently up until I was 4, I never talked. There was some kind of cognitive dissonance with language, although it's probably hard to believe now," he explains wryly.