Finding Raffi Podcast Review

The Pitch:

Chris Garcia explores the music and philosophy of children’s songwriter, Raffi.

The Product:

Finding Raffi is the follow up to Finding Fred, which we reviewed at the start of 2020, at a time when society sought guidance from pop culture figures in what felt like an increasingly divided and anxiety-inducing world.

Well, it’s the start of 2022 and believe it or not, it seems like we could still learn a thing or two about empathy, or as Finding Raffi positions it, respect.

This is set to be a 10-part series with comedian Chris Garcia on hosting duties. Now, podcasts like these can be a little self serious and self indulgent. There’s a lot of seemingly mundane autobiographical content from Chris early on. Do we really need to know his feelings on the reassuring crackle of a record player when you listen to vinyl?

As it turns out, yes. Just as Raffi is more than a children’s songwriter, Chris knows how to put together a story, and there are some layers to this podcasting onion.

The premise is this. Chris is a new father, trying to make sense of the world and his newfound place in it. Fairly standard existential/philosophical stuff for an introspective LA-based comedian, but not enough for a full podcast.

Enter Raffi - or rather Raffi’s music- which Chris plays for his daughter and quickly becomes infatuated with, his audiophile tendencies consuming him as he feasts on the songwriting, production values, and life values that are bubbling throughout the songs. It doesn’t take long for him to discover the producer of Raffi’s first album would go on to become an industry powerhouse. A simmering obsession boils over.

Parallels are very quickly drawn between Chris and Raffi. They both had to navigate growing up in North America as the sons of emigrant parents (Cuban and Armenian respectively) who had high expectations for their children. There is plenty to unpack in this shared experience alone, even before delving into the Armenian Genocide and the mind-boggling lengths that Raffi’s grandparents had to go to to flee in the 1910s.

Take a well produced podcast from a thoughtful comedian, add a story marinated in rich musical history…