March, icy wind and white city. Six o’clock in the followingnoon on Saturday the 25th and the Arequipa fans of Rafo Ráez began to arrive at the Umbral Theater to listen to the 54-year-old suicide bomber.
With more than three decades of musical career, punk from Chibolo although more contemplative today, Rafael Adolfo Ráez Luna offered an almost two-hour show on the nocturnal San Francisco street.
At half past seven, “Campo minado de corazones” managed to dilute the cold and started the 15-song show.
With a Fender Verde Sur Místico, dark jacket, chancabuques and skin head, the former Euthanasia delighted the more than 80 followers who came to the “Rafo Ráez a la carte” event.
Between poetics carried out to convince skinny tan girls, lovers of grunge street trova accompanied the singer-songwriter and anthropologist who sets verses by Watanabe and Vallejo to music.
Rafo Ráez dedicated the concert to Rosalino Florez, the young man from Cusco who died following two months fighting injuries that left more than 30 pellets in his body, becoming the 67th victim of the repressive governance crisis in Peru since he took office. President Dina Boluarte.
The response of the Arequipa public was beer in hand and pastrulas letters stuck in the throat. The peak moments of the recital were with “Todo es precario”, “Tronador” and the timid and dirty statements of “Al amor ha se dicho”.
After the event, his first gig on Peruvian soil following his recent tour of Europe, Rafo Raéz spoke with ElBuho.pe regarding his musical career, the negligent handling of politics that our country is experiencing and the ideas he plans to work on in the future.
In an interview with the critic Pedro Cornejo, he considers that your first album is one of the best produced by the national scene, each album with its own personality but hardly commercial. Have you ever been interested in that massiveness of a mainstream musician? Or this consistent career is more than enough for you as a singer-songwriter.
There was no possibility of making mainstream music in Peru that would give the artist freedom. That is to say, those who made that music in this country have been imprisoned in a single formula that they have had to repeat and repeat. Many Peruvian musicians are opposed to the change.
For example, in other Latin American countries there have been artists who are mainstream and transformative at the same time —as in the case of Soda Stereo in Argentina— but something like this has never happened in Peru nor will it happen as long as we have the radio we have.
What interested me was sustaining my freedom to transform myself and Peruvian radio might not offer me that.
The radios in Peru have never been a reflection of their local scene. What is your reading regarding this very myopic position of the radio stations in the country, which for decades have always turned their backs on this local production? —Saving very specific exceptions such as double nine or distortion with Pedro Cornejo on TV Peru in 1999—.
It’s amazing, I mean, the situation of radio stations in Peru is incredible because if you cross any of our borders: everything is different. For example, the Chilean radio supports the Chilean musician and so in each case. So there is the feeling that in Peru it is almost like the radio behaves like an enemy.
Perhaps the explanation for this is the sick centralism in our country. Many of these radios are like the sound face of centralism that at the same time does not allow the musician to sound.
You yourself are part of that refreshing wave of the national independent scene of the 90s. How do you think this experience affected what in the future would be a vast discography of this entire generation?
I belong more to the generation of the 90s. We agree in some things with the bands of the 80s but I don’t feel part of them. I start more with the Pixies —my favorite song is Number 13 baby— and finish when Coldplay comes on.
What we did in this generation more than anything is compact discs and this improved the quality and fidelity of music and sound.
We started making double discs because a CD lasted 70 minutes while a vinyl lasted 45 minutes. Then we musicians began to do much more, but they recognized us much less.
Another thing regarding this stage is that the rock scene was closely linked to the hip hop scene and that helped us produce a new concept of music and a new sound. As for the lyrics, some themes regarding love still persisted, but we also started talking regarding sex.
It is inevitable that the current situation is not distant from us. You were a student at San Marcos University, you had a production as part of the Herejes y Renegados magazine, how did you feel when you saw your university violently taken over by the Armed Forces and the treatment of people who came from the provinces just to do hear your voice in the capital?
More than sanmarquino, it has affected me as a Peruvian. It is an image that shames us before the entire planet.
Regarding the political crisis, the most important media of capitalism itself are saying that ‘the Police shot to kill… they shot for pure police abuse’. The ‘communists’ are not saying it, but rather the same media of capitalism are admitting it.
It seems that the political class did not have an idea of the country, a country project. It’s like they’re at the helm but they don’t have a real country dream. We experience that feeling of political passivity almost like that of an anti-government.
We are not realizing how great Peru is, which we might lose, because in various ways we have a built homeland, which is interesting, real, perhaps defective, but real.
You have worked with the painter Christian Bendayan, the poet José Watanabe or the Grammy winner, Susana Baca, what else do you still need to achieve in your extensive musical career? Or better still, what legacy do you hope to leave for all those who have followed your career in these almost four decades?
I would like an album to come out with all the music I have made for film and theater.
There are a lot of directors who are doing very cool things in the cinema and I have worked with them. Directors like Natalia Rojas from “Antonia en la vida”, Rodrigo Moreno with “LXI”, Elba Arrieta and his animated short film “Alba”. Martin Rebaza with “Among these trees that I have invented”. And more for television, for series. All of that is scattered and it’s not on any record… It’s not a follow-up project but it’s something I’d like to see come out.
The music of Rafo Ráez is available at Spotify and arrived in Arequipa thanks to the efforts of Blood Masters of Juku Productions.
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