AprilFishes
This is the sound of a new era---where global ties are strengthened through human contact, ideas and inspiration rather than trade agreements and tightened borders. Rupa & the April Fishes create music that busts through boundaries of musical genre, language and time making a fresh sound that must be experienced rather than pigeonholed.
Their rousing and intimate performances have earned them comparisons as encompassing as Lhasa to Gogol Bordello and Beirut to Manu Chao. Drawing from her nomadic childhood in India, France and the US as well as her work as a physician in San Francisco, Rupa's songs explore a wide swath of human experience in a multitude of languages drawing upon inspiration from songs from the streets around the world arranged for cello, accordion, trumpet, upright bass, drums and guitar.
The band is based in the lotus-eaters land of San Francisco and has toured in the US, Mexico, Canada and Europe. They have traveled to Tijuana where they stayed with deported migrants and learned more about the humanistic impact of the US-Mexico border. In 2008, they played the Montreal Jazz Festival, Central Park Summerstage, Grand Performances, SXSW, the inaugural epic Outside Lands Festival and toured in the US, Europe and Canada in support of the release of their debut album "eXtraOrdinary rendition" on Cumbancha in April 2008.
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We woke up yesterday in El Centro and headed into Calexico to see the graveyard where the unidentified migrants found in that area are buried. They are found by the border patrol and taken to the County Coroner's Office and then sent to this grave site. I had contacted Calexico's Coroner's Office last month to see if they would grant me an interview during this trip. They politely declined. The officer I spoke to said he was "suspicious" of what I was doing, a doctor traveling with musicians to the border to do a project.
"Suspicious"--of what? Making music? Or practicing medicine? Of forming my own opinions based upon my reading, questioning and experience? Probably all of it. Read more...
Talking to the cemetary groundskeeper in el centro, It hit home just how over-politicized immigration has become. It is what politicians and pundits call a "wedge issue".
At one point he said "they're not bad people. They just want to work." and then "no offense, but you don't see white people in the fields picking crops. They don't want those jobs." Read more...
I'm up early this morning in El Centro. We drove here last night from Tijuana. The rest of our time in Tijuana was profound.
I met a young man who was in the sick room at the Casa del Migrante. His name is Roman Tlapa Ortiz. He's 22 years old and will likely never walk properly again. He had originally crossed the border into the US when he was 16 years old to work in Los Angeles as a metal worker. He made $12/hour working 40 hours a week and sent most of that money home to his family. In Mexico, the same kind of labor would pay him anywhere between $5-15 a day. Read more...
We made it Tijuana yesterday and spent the end of the day at the beach, talking with people who were preparing to cross the border and taking photos of the place where the US-Mexico border enters the water. It was amazing to talk with this one man who was waiting for night to fall before he and his wife tried to cross along the beach. She is 6 months pregnant and they have 3 other children who were born and live in the US who they were trying to rejoin after having been deported. The openness of the people we spoke to was wonderful. They felt it was important to simply tell their stories and it felt good to receive them with open minds. Read more...
Rupa & the April Fishes is a San Francisco-based, folk rock/latin fusion band described as "slinky, fevered, hypnotic and intoxicating." Recently, they've begun a socio-musical tour along the US Mexico border, from Tijuana to Texas and beyond. The tour, "Por La Frontera," will include an across-the-border concert, with half the band playing in Tijuana and half in San Diego. Each concert in the tour will be a multi-media event that combines music with video projections created by documentary photographer Lars Howlett. Read more...
