Doctor Makes Music That Crosses Cultural Divides

Rupa Marya felt a sense of pride mixed with disbelief when she learned last year that the album she had just released was the top seller in the world music category on iTunes. A welcome bit of good news during Rupa & the April Fishes‘ first European tour, but a little awkward, too. "World music is brown music presented for white people’s consumption," Marya says, with a look that makes clear that this is a category with which she has no desire to be associated.

Extraordinary Rendition, the debut album that has continued to sell consistently in America and in some European countries, has been in the iTunes top 100 for more than a year. While the title refers to the transfer of terrorist suspects to countries with less stringent safeguards against human-rights abuses (critics refer to extraordinary rendition as "outsourcing torture"), music reviewers quickly realized this wasn’t a typical collection of political protest songs—yet the same reviewers have struggled with the indefinable character of the sound. The music—a lively combination of melancholic French chansons, exuberant Gypsy swing, alternative Latin, dreamy Indian ragas and soothing avant-garde—can’t easily be pigeonholed. The instrumentation is also eclectic: trumpet, accordion, cello, upright bass, drums and Marya herself on guitar. Plus, Marya sings her richly imaginative lyrics in French, Spanish, English and Hindi.

But musical boundaries aren’t the only thing Marya wants to break through. She’s on a mission to declare national borders superfluous, too. This is the topic of a couple of her songs on her second album Este Mundo, due for release in October. But she’s doing more than singing about it. Marya is launching an art project this fall to make Latin American migrants to the U.S. aware of their rights to health care. (Marya works part-time in a hospital as a physician.) Earlier this year, she and the band traveled to the Mexican border to perform and draw attention to America’s immigration policies, which she believes lead to horrendous personal dramas. "I just can’t believe immigration was not an issue in the presidential elections last year," she says. "It feels strange to me that there is not a brighter spotlight on it in this day and age."

Before we step inside her apartment in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, Marya, 34, apologizes that the place looks a bit like a tornado blew through. She’s packing the second time this year for a European tour. In her living room, which doubles as a rehearsal space for the band, a painting leans against the wall, portraying a bird with outstretched wings flying over the U.S.-Mexico border. Asked what speaks to her about it, she replies, "It captures a simple gesture of freedom of movement that feels more congruent with life than the rigid boundaries we create. It speaks to me of the borders we create in our own minds."

She herself has been a nomad since birth, thanks to her restless Indian parents. Before she was 12, the family had moved to the foothills of the Himalayas in the north of India, the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence and back to the Bay Area where she was born after her father, an engineer, found a job in Silicon Valley. Since finishing medical school, she has been living in San Francisco, a place she says she feels at home, perhaps because of the cultural diversity that characterizes both her life and that of the city.

We leave the homey chaos for a nearby bistro where—much to the delight of the French waiter—she demonstrates a perfect command of his language. (She later tells me she wants to sing in French and other languages to show that there’s a beauty in things that may sound different.) As we slowly nibble away at our cheese plate, Marya describes the daily impact of the border that lies more than 500 miles to the south.

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Photograph: Spencer Hansen

By Marco Visscher for Ode Magazine