We had a very personable and honest conversation with Rafael Pareja Ibañez, who via WhatsApp has given us a few minutes of his busy schedule to tell us a bit about his fascinating career to date and the group he currently leads, Rafaelito Y Su Tumbao. 

The artist, born in Lima, Peru, has a huge love for music and remains intact to date, so he says it is a pleasure to share the story of how he came to pursue it professionally, no matter how many times he tells it.

Rafael’s beginnings in music

Rafael was first inspired by the artists his parents used to listen to at home, including La Sonora Matancera, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, and many others. Family social gatherings always featured iconic songs by these stars, so he could not help but be interested in music at the early age of 10.

It all started when his father caught him beating some paint buckets to make it look like he was playing a drum set on the roof of their house, which led him to enroll his child in a music school to take guitar lessons. While it is true that this was the first instrument he learned to play, he also plays the baby bass in salsa and the piano together with all the percussion instruments.

At that time, what the young man played the most was rock and pop because the radio and other media left little room for Latin music. In fact, Rafael formed his first rock band at 16, as this was the genre with which young people identified the most in the 1980s.

Move to Germany

At 20 years of age, Rafael decided to move to Germany, specifically to Munich, where he lived for more than 27 years. It was there that he came into contact with people of other nationalities and had far more access to Latin music, especially Peruvian music, which surprised him greatly. He also got to listen to international stars such as Eddie Palmieri, Miguelito Cuní, and Arsenio Rodríguez.

It was also in Munich where he began to have his first professional experience together with major musical groups from there such as the Sexteto Melaza, where he played alongside musicians from different parts of the world. At a student barbecue, Rafael was hanging out with many Latinos, and they began to sing and play instruments together, leading them to form a group, which they named Melaza. During that time, he dedicated himself to play salsa, guaracha, son, bolero, and cha-cha-cha in a sextet format.

The group featured a guitarist, a bassist, a conga player, a timbalero, a bongo player, and a singer. This sums up his first musical experience in Germany, which lasted about a year and a half. It also helped him draw the attention of other musicians in the city’s music scene, who convinced him to join other projects that were being created.

Another of those projects included a trio of young musicians called Madera Limpia which was founded in 2005, when rap, reggaeton, reggae, and many other genres mixed with Latin rhythms such as changüí or kiribá were super trendy. It turns out that a Romanian couple traveled to Cuba, produced a film called “Paraíso,” and went on a concert tour through Europe and North Asia. Therefore, they needed to hire many musicians, including the members of Madera Limpia, who contacted Rafael through connections and asked him to be their bassist. The Peruvian accepted the offer and toured all those places with these musicians, an experience he talks about with great affection.

Back in Munich, he met Lou Bega, the creator of the hugely popular swing-pop cover of Pérez Prado’s “Mambo No. 5,” which stayed at number one for 36 consecutive weeks in the United States. When his producer wanted to find a band to accompany him, there were very few Latin musicians in the city and Rafael was one of them. Obviously, they called him and his colleagues to work on some demos featuring Bega’s vocals and trumpet samples. After being selected, he became the director of his live band and accompanied him on many concerts in Europe between 2007 and 2008.

Rafaelito Y Su Tumbao

Right there in Munich, Rafael finally made up his mind and formed his own musical group, Rafaelito Y Su Tumbao, which currently has branches in Munich, Lima, and New York, where the artist currently resides. Rafael arrived in this city as early as 2020, which is when he got to perform with stars such as Charlie Aponte, Andy Montañez, Jose Alberto “El Canario,” Hildemaro, and many others. When he saw how good the human material was in his new place of residence, he also founded Rafaelito Y Su Tumbao in New York with musicians from there. 

What is striking about his move to New York is that it was motivated by Rafael’s reunion with his childhood sweetheart in Peru, whom he reconnected with in 2019. It turns out that his partner was living in New York, so he jumped on this new opportunity that life offered him and made the romantic decision to cross the Atlantic again and marry her. This radically changed his life both personally and professionally, but he’s glad he did.

Read also: Dominican bandleader and musical director Orlando Santana talks about La Makina and his career in general