Album review

Dan Strachota

Some people find the term world music condescending, but there’s no better way to describe the terrain of Rupa & the April Fishes, simply because the band’s music encompasses so much of the globe. Founded by San Francisco physician Rupa Marya, who was born in the Bay Area and raised mostly abroad, this ensemble is at home playing Mexican waltzes, Indian ragas, French chansons, and Gypsy jazz. With so many cultures represented, the group’s debut CD could sound like a dilettante’s travelogue, a kind of sketchbook of tourist scenes. But Marya inhabits the languages she sings in (English, French, Spanish, and Hindi) with remarkable grace and sensuality. Her band—cellist Ed Baskerville, trumpeter Marcus Cohen, bassist Safa Shokrai, drummer Aaron Kierbel, and accordionists Adrian Jost (on the CD) and Isabel Douglass—is equally accomplished, moving comfortably from the ethereal balladry of “Yaad” to the bouncy carnival jazz of “Plus Que Moi” to the sultry tango of “Maintenant.” The final song, “Wishful Thinking,” is embellished with ambient sounds recorded beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. If Bob Dylan hadn’t gotten there first, this album could easily have been called Bringing It All Back Home. A- (Cumbancha)