Drawing Music: Raupa

Raupa
07.08.2023
4 min. of reading time

Music is not only one of the main ways of doing my work, but of being in a place. I like silence, but there are musics that achieve that as well. I consume an enormous amount of music and I'm always discovering new things. I give a lot of value to the music I use to do my work, which is not so much a job because it's a lot of fun, although in reality, when it's an illustration, a poster, it takes a complicated process of concentration and creation. Music, in that sense, helps me a lot; if I didn't have music for the process I think I wouldn't be the same person, nor would I create the same things.

Of all of them, I prefer film soundtracks, I fall in love with them. I listen to them and create movies while I'm drawing. To a certain extent, it's what keeps me alive working, creating.

Since I graduated in 2005 I have always been involved in projects that have to do directly or indirectly with music. I remember the beginning: when we worked with Harold Lopez-Nussa and the video of Swiss dancing. Other videoclips followed: Aldo López-Gavilán, Buena Fe, Eme Alfonso, X Alfonso and the most recent one, to close a stage of videoclips in my life. —that's how I see it— with Harold again (and Cimafunk). I think if I hadn't been a designer, illustrator, I would have been a musician or maybe something to do with that world. It's one of my key pieces for a living.

Since I started making audiovisuals at a very early age —spots for television, for social networks— it used to be necessary to edit a music that would be part of the story. I did it with fear and also with a lot of respect: we must always understand what the artist wants to say and what is the feeling he is trying to capture in his creation, in his composition.

Whenever I work with music there is always inspiration, and it's not hidden, it's in the surface. Maybe in more abstract projects inspiration comes in a more difficult way and you have to do what designers, artists and musicians do: deconstruct everything you are doing to find a core, a common point and from there establish the creation; but when I work for music, with music, it's super easy: I'm the one who chooses it, and I always do it based on my personal taste.

If I have to take only one album to a desert island it would be a movie soundtrack, what do I know, the music is so vast that it is impossible for me to decide, but I think it would be like the one from Nocturnal Animalsone of my favorite films; or that of The Great Beautyby Sorrentino. And of course, Cuban music, I need it, and on a desert island, even more. I can't specify which one, but there would be Los Van Van, Cimafunk, Harold, Aldito, X Alfonso, Eme, Ancestros and Ancestors Symphonic.