Biography
Rupa & the April Fishes maintain their base in San Francisco, California, yet cultivate a distinctly borderless form of cultural fusion. Rupa Marya serves as the ensemble’s lead vocalist and chief songwriter, performing not solely in English but equally in French, Spanish, Hindi, and the Roma tongue of the Gypsies. Although born near San Francisco, Marya grew up across multiple continents because her India-born parents maintained an itinerant lifestyle that included extended periods in northern India and France. Medical training remained her central pursuit—she works today as an internist at a teaching hospital in San Francisco—yet she began piano and guitar lessons in childhood and turned to songwriting during adolescence. After collaborating in a folk duo alongside San Francisco singer/songwriter Kate Isenberg, Marya launched Rupa & the April Fishes to fuse every musical language she had absorbed, from wistful French chansons and dramatic Roma ballads to the Mexican-American pop that saturates the Bay Area, all framed by lyrics shaped by her internationalist outlook. While finishing her medical residency, she assembled the group around her own guitar and lead vocals, recruiting cellists Ed Baskerville and Pawel Walerowski, trumpeter Marcus Cohen, accordionists Isabel Douglass and Adrian Jost, bassist Safa Shokrai, and drummer Aaron Kierbel. The band issued its debut album, Extraordinary Rendition, in 2007; Este Mundo appeared in 2009.
Albums
