Meet Rafael Rosa

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rafael Rosa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rafael, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

My grandma Boli always taught us to work hard. She was always talking about how she got pregnant in the 1950s at a young age in Puerto Rico and how she always had to work multiple jobs, move to NY, come back to Puerto Rico. She always stressed and preach that if you don’t work hard you can’t get to the goals that you want to get to in life. She was one of the main people in my corner when I decided to go and pursue music professionally. She told me ” You have to practice! No excuses, if you do that, you’ll be alright and you’ll prove everybody wrong.” She was 100% correct!

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’ll write a bit from my bio:

Rafael has established himself as a premier guitarist, composer and engineer since his arrival in NYC back in 2011, receiving rave reviews on his playing as a sideman and as a leader. His debut “Portrait” (2014) was co- produced by Multi-Grammy Award Winning Bassist/Composer John Benitez and was awarded 4 stars from international publications. “Portrait” features an incredible cast of master musicians bringing together Puerto Rico’s Bomba and Plena rhythms, jazz harmony, and rock’s aggressive nature to form a unique and original canvas of sound beyond the normal clave.
His second album as a leader “Axiomatic: Music For The People” was released March 2022 and later that year he was named a Fellow for the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for Music Composition. He’s received numerous awards for his music including Best Composition/Song in London’s Film Festival in 2022 and the Global Citizens Film Festival in 2024 as well. His 3rd release: “Profe”, is an exploration on world rhythms, back-beats and new textures of produced groove in homage to Puerto Rico’s Silenced “Professors” , some of these name include: Pedro Albizu Campos, Lola Rodriguez de Tio, Juan Emeterio Betances and a few other of Puerto Rico’s most important historic political minds is set to be released in 2025. Rosa is also working on a Afro-Rican trio album, rooted in bomba, plena, son, and other african diaspora elements mixed with jazz and rock as well as his new group the DRD Modern Organ Trio. All set to come out early 2025

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Being able to communicate, assimilate, and execute are some of the most important skills/qualities that I think I apply on a consistent basis You always have to have the attitude of always learning. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t try and learn something new. Communication gets better with being organized and time management. Once you have the habbit or learning every day, assimilation, learning quicker becomes easier. Executing involves practice, repetition, routing, discipline, sacrifice…. doing it when you don’t necessarily want to do it. I turn my phone off a lot, and have prolonged periods of focused study, quality over quantity is what I like to preach and practice.

What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?

Music Business & The Economy of being a Modern Musician. A lot of time, us musicians are so focused on the actual music we forget that there is this whole mainframe that puts it all together so that people can actually buy your music and listen to you. Finding the right balance is key. Your performance skills should always be kept ready and polished while your business skills should be systematized to get the maximum out of your time management. Writing 50-100 emails as a working musician is sometimes not easy. Back to my point from before, treating myself like my business has helped me open doors I would have never opened otherwise.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

@jazninamarie

@sr_aza

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