Tomorrow night, a beautiful sound is coming to Los Angeles. It’s called Rupa and the April Fishes, and they’re gracing us with their presence at Temple Bar in Santa Monica. I’ve seen the lead singer Rupa perform solo — just her and her guitar — at a coffeehouse in San Francisco last year, and she’s fun, socially conscious and versatile, to say the least.What’s even more interesting to me (and inspiring!), is that Rupa is a 3rd year Primary Care Internal Medicine resident at UCSF — you know, the job where you work 80 hours a week after medical school for a few years? She’s finagled a way to truly pursue both doctoring and performing music — a way that includes splitting up her residency into a few months on, few months off (to perform) and I hear from my friend Nicole (who’s a resident in that same program) that Rupa comes back to the hospital with a renewed sense of energy for her work and compassion for her patients.

Her experience as a physician shaped the evolution of the group’s current tour called “Por la Frontera”. They’re performing from SF to Tijuana and raising awareness and doing benefits for immigration rights issues. As she explained to me in an email:

This tour was inspired by several patients i met working at sf general, immigrants who came to health care too late in their disease process for fear of being deported. it struck me as messed up that a policy could alienate someone from their own sense of health so much that they would not seek help when they knew they needed it.

Come play! 10pm, Temple Bar. When you’re asked at the door who you’re there to see, say Rupa and the April Fishes! (this way they’ll surely come back to the Temple Bar to perform!) Call or email me if you’re planning on going :>

More info on the band: MySpace page (check out the featured tracks! so beautiful) and TheAprilFishes.com

A snippet from a review:
“They sing and play together with such wonderful ease and gusto, it’s as if they’ve been playing together for years. Their multilingual music draws from cross-cultural influences and source material — Indian ragas, tango, French chanson, bossa nova, jazz, not to mention numerous forms of folk music from around the world — which conjures words like slinky, fevered, hypnotic and intoxicating.”–Aquarius Records Review