Excerpt: The Magic and Might of Raffi

Raffi is a captivating performer with the ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hands — even when it’s a roomful of distractible, temperamental kids. This clip from an upcoming episode of “Finding Raffi” offers a sample of this artist in action.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's something that amazes me about Raffi, how easily he
can hold the attention of an auditorium full of kids
bumping up and down in the little red wagon, bumping
up and down. I keep thinking about this one Raffi
concert video, in particular, whoa to be My Raffi is

(00:22):
physically jumping up and down in his seat. The camera
pans up to the balcony to show a pair of
kids mimicking his movements. In fact, the entire concert hall
of kids is bumping up and down in Unison's Hey,
this wagon is still busted. The stick of the song
is that the wagon keeps breaking down. By this point,

(00:46):
the kids are losing their minds, yelling out the names
of tools Raffy could use to fix the lagon. Listen
to those ideas. This place is full of mechanics today.
And just when you think a riot is about to
break out, if Rafee stalls one more minute, he comes
in with a punch line. I wonder what I've used
to fix the wagon? Raff He's gonna fix it with

(01:08):
those sandwich Raffy's own fix it with This man's got
time with sandwich so that he can eat it down wagon.
We had fun singing these songs together. And then I
would meet the audience after the show, and that was
kind of neat because kids with their parents would come

(01:30):
up and the child would be trying to say something
to me, and maybe it was taking their time, and
the parents would be trying to hurry them along. Sometimes
I'd say wait, let's just listen, please, and then the
child would have time to say something. And kids would
ask wonderful questions of me. In those days of cassettes, Raffie,

(01:53):
how did you get out of my tape? They would say, well,
it wasn't me who was in there in the first place.
It was just my voice. That's what you're hearing. Oh,
that's say. These early days of success were thrilling, but
Raffie notes they were also stressful. Back then, he thought

(02:15):
they had serious work to do. You know, I've had
periods of my life where it's you know, I've had
challenges to go through. You know, I'm no different than
anybody else, personal challenges, professional challenges. At one point I
said to myself, I keep falling up hill. Here's Ralfie's
longtime collaborator and friend, Bert Simpson. Raffie will spend a

(02:39):
lot of time on the tiniest details of things, getting
them exactly the way he wants them to be. And
that's just the way he is. The perfectionism could be tiring.
Sometimes sometimes I just go on and say, okay, well
let's just pick one show, you know, and get on
with it. But it's not like that. So if that's

(03:00):
what he meant by taking himself seriously, you know he did.
Ralphie's attention to detail and commitment to excellence to the
point of perfection put work ahead of fun. He writes
that he could be controlling and moody if things didn't
go his way, and that he often put too much
pressure on others, but especially on himself. The friends in

(03:20):
our lives can be a huge support to us. A
prayerful attitude can often help in many ways. You know,
I'm just grateful to always return to a place of
love and joy. Meanwhile, as Ralphie's family audiences kept growing,
his dream of becoming a folk singer for adults started
to fade. He kept some of his night gigs, but

(03:42):
the dream started to feel too distant, so he decided
to fully commit to his children's music career. Soon he
would start selling out thousand seat venues and festivals from
coast to coast. He'd make hit album after hit album.
He'd be off, movie deals and endorsements. The path to

(04:03):
superstardom was knocking on his door, but Raffie said no,
No toys, no fast food deals, no corporate endorsements, no
to the industry standard. Raffi was determined to forge his
own path, and he was gonna make it happen his way.

(04:33):
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new dad and host of Finding Raffie,
a new podcast from my Heart Radio and Fatherly. Listen
to Finding Raffie on Janu on the I Heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcasts