When you listen to rafa This is not performance. It’s ritual. An experiment in stimuli—manipulating sound waves to provoke, to heal, to haunt. Every show is a new audio experience.

Sonic brutality. Expectations are traps—he has no intention of fulfilling them. This is not music. This is a process of transformation. Atmosphere is the medium. Noise is the language. Each performance is a rupture:

• • A rejection of passive listening
  • A confrontation with the self
  • A ritual of disintegration and reassembly
  • Sound becomes pressure.
  • Control is an illusion.
  • Love is the frequency.

Rafa hopped on to The Jitney to discuss all this and more.

Why the name, rafa?

rafa: About two years ago, I decided to change my artist name to rafa and retire the other monikers I had been using for over a decade, for the sake of honesty and clarity. It’s short. Easy to remember, easy to forget. It’s generic and specific at the same time. It universally signals my heritage without being too specific. Mostly, it reminds me to forget all pretenses and just make what’s me—what comes from within, as a reflection of what accumulates outside of me through shared experience.

What is your practice situation, and who and how do you write your songs?

I practice at home on headphones, at the workshop or studio of a friend or two, at my office after work—sometimes I’ll even practice a “song” at one live event to prepare for another. I write my “songs” by creating patterns, algorithms, and sequences—usually beats, structured noise, or things tangentially akin to grooves or melodies—that I mix, reorder, and deconstruct live as a base for freer and more spontaneous improvisation.

If you could have a guest musician play with you, who would it be?

Mon Rivera. He was from Mayagüez, like me, and I feel a deep connection to his music and lore. His sound was playful, percussive, with edge, coded clarity, and full of swagger.

Tell us about your next album. When can we expect it?

I’ve been recording my live sets straight from the mixer at most of the shows I play around Miami. I dropped a collection of those tracks in May. The next one should be out in September or October—same approach, different moments.

Share with us something that you wouldn’t usually tell other people.

My first art school professor told me I was an innate problem solver—but unfortunately, also an inherent troublemaker.

Where do you come from?

Puerto Rico and South Florida. I grew up in both. I found myself, then lost myself, and then found myself again in both. And I developed creatively in both.

Do you have a video coming out?

All the time…But, longer than 30 seconds? Maybe in six months.

What was the first album you each bought?

A bootleg cassette copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that I begged my parents to buy me when I was four years old. We saw the premiere of the video for the album’s titular song on MTV. It gave me nightmares, but I was obsessed with it.

Anything else you want to tell me or provide to include into this?

In errant loops and granular ghosts—glitch-born invocations crossing trembling thresholds, a través de las voces de mis ancestros. Cada azar es un portal. Control is an illusion. I do this out of love and reverence for humanity.

Please provide your social media handles.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafael.vargas.bernard/
Bandcamp: https://rafarafarafa.bandcamp.com/