By Megan Ma
 Rupa Marya of Los Altos is pursuing promising careers as a singer and a doctor. |
In art houses and cafes tucked into San Francisco’s Mission District, Rupa Marya, a 30-year old musician and Los Altos native, draws a devoted following. Rupa, as she’s billed, strikes a blend of traditional French chanson, American folk and nuanced Indian scales with an unusual force and grace.
Although her music is delicate and simple, there’s nothing demure about her approach. The lyrics, written mostly in French and Spanish, are confident and her vocal delivery incandescent and moving. Accompanied by a talented band including a violinist and accordionist, the sound is richly varied.
Off-stage the musician walks an intriguing dual path. About to complete her third year as a medical resident at UCSF, Marya recalls telling her grandmother as a child that one day she would become a surgeon and a ballerina. The older woman would scoff in embarrassment.
“Since I was young, I wanted to be a doctor but always loved art, too. I’ve always been compelled and drawn to use my mind in different ways,” Marya said.
As an undergraduate at UC San Diego, Marya double-majored in biology and theater, excelling in both fields. The transition from science to art felt natural and fluid, she said, and she celebrated her friendships with her professors across disciplines. It was then she began to play guitar seriously and take voice lessons.
She was admitted to Georgetown Medical School soon after, deciding to defer enrollment for a year. Moving to Washington, D.C., Marya formed a band with a close friend and violinist from high school and got her first taste of performance while touring popular cafes and bars.
Her first year at medical school was grueling; between dissecting cadavers and long hours of study, she wrote songs and continued to perform. As a first-generation Indian woman, her family was particularly invested in her success as a physician, she said. Marya struggled to make sense of her talents and her desire to fulfill family expectations.
“It was a very tortured time. I was trying to justify to myself being a doctor and a musician,” she said.
It was at the height of her inner debate that tragedy struck: her father died suddenly in southern France, where her parents had been living for five years. Her grandmother was killed in India. It was the year of 9/11, and as she watched the Twin Towers explode on television, she felt like her world was ending, she said.
“I realized then everything I had to do, what I was supposed to do in life. There was an urgency to understand what I’m here for,” Marya said.
Strengthening her resolve, Marya successfully completed medical school and was admitted to residency programs at Harvard and UCSF. She clung more fiercely to her dream of performing, of expressing the artistic spirit she worried might “shrivel up and die” when she became a doctor.
Fortunately, close friends, an uncommonly supportive school staff and musical mentors such as Michael Franti of Spearhead, encouraged Marya to find her voice, she explained. Without their support, she would have floundered, she said. Last year marked a turning point in her life.
“I picked up the guitar and told myself I wasn’t going to live in fear of expression. Few people in art understand what I’m doing in medicine; few people in medicine understand what I’m doing in art. My artistic work perhaps will be the blurring of those boundaries. So much of both experiences are the same; they have to do with suffering, joy - the experience of being human,” Marya said.
Marya will perform her new songs April 5 at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco. She has arranged the songs with her ensemble “Les poissons d’avril” (the April fishes), which includes Adrian Jost, Ed Baskerville, Aaron Kierbel and Kate Isenberg. They plan to tour Europe this summer with celebrated jazz musician Marcus Shelby.
For more information or upcoming shows, visit www.rupamarya.com.
