Giving change a chance
Rupa & the April Fishes dissolve borders with their multicultural music
By Bliss 07/24/2008
Countless émigrés — be they moving from East Coast to West Coast, New Delhi to London or San Salvador to Pacoima — connect with fellow expatriates and create supportive microcosms of their old homes in their newfound communities. But Rupa Marya, born in San Francisco to Indian parents and raised in northern India and the south of France as well as the Bay Area, faced more unusual challenges than most when trying to locate the one place, or community, where she truly felt “home.” So she created a new, more expansive family of creative kindred spirits who embrace and help her connect the disparate elements of her past and present.
In so doing, she gave her life story the kind of intriguing hook that publicists drool over. By day, she studies charts and answers beepers as a staff doctor of internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. By night, she plucks guitar and swirls her skirts while fronting a charmingly eclectic band, Rupa & the April Fishes. Many of her quad-lingual songs — sung in French, Spanish, Hindi and English — evolve out of vulnerable moments shared with patients, and their stories.
Onstage, she and her bandmates freely blend tango, Gypsy music, jazz, French chanson, a touch of klezmer and whatever else adds zest to their flavorful stew of guitar, cello, trumpet, bandoneon, upright bass, percussion and Rupa’s sultry-sweet soprano. The music is inherently joyful and favors listeners who also like to dance. But the band’s recently released CD, “eXtraOrdinary rendition” (out on Cumbancha), also acknowledges political tensions. Over a deceptively peppy bass beat reinforced by castanets and jaunty trumpet, “Poder (Power)” addresses the US-Mexico border fence running to the ocean, while “Une Americaine à Paris” relates an encounter with an Algerian in Paris that turns from cordial to uncomfortable when he discovers Rupa is American.
Music has always been a kind of alternative medicine, even for jaded souls. Lyrically referencing nature, romance and the need to grasp life and honor time, Rupa puts that philosophy into practice, using music as a force for healing and connection. It won’t change the world overnight, but while the band’s playing at least it seems like change has a chance.
The Grand Performances series presents Rupa & the April Fishes in a free concert at noon Friday at California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown LA. Call (213) 687-2159 for more info. The band plays again from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Skirball Cultural Center’s Café Z, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., LA. Call (310) 440-4500. Saturday’s performance will be followed by a free screening of “Breaking the Silence,” a film about Afghani music after the fall of the Taliban. www.theaprilfishes.com
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