Rafpseudonym of Raffaele Riefoliis the famous singer-songwriter of numerous successes unforgettable moments of Italian music: from “Self Control” to “Cosa restarà…”, from “Il battest animali” to “Ti pretendo” and “Infinito”. In 2026 he returns to sing on one of the most important stages in Italy: that of Sanremo Festival.
Before he became famous, however, he was a young student with many dreamsshy but at the same time rebellious, and who had a strict family upbringing. But what did he study?
What qualifications does Raf Raffaele Riefoli have?
Raffaele Riefoli was born in Margaret of Savoy (in Puglia, the current province of Barletta-Andria-Trani, at the time in the province of Foggia) the September 29, 1959. At the age of 17so during your studies in high school, you are transferred to Florence by signing up to “Porta Romana Art High School“of the city. Here he obtained his high school diploma and subsequently enrolled at the university at the faculty of Architecturebut without completing the course of study.
He then moved for a period to London chasing his dream of a career in music: there he founded, together with Ghigo Renzulli (future guitarist of the rock group Litfiba), the rock/punk group “Cafè Caracas”. With them, as a bassist and not yet a singer, he recorded the cover of Mina “Tintarella di luna”.
In the Florentine period and then in London, Raf said he supported himself with some savings and with odd jobs that allowed him to live away from home. In Florence, he said in an interview with Vanity Fair who slept every night in a different bed: “There was always someone ready to host me, to share a plate of pasta”. In London, instead, to support himself he worked as dishwasher.
It was the meeting with Giancarlo Bigazzi that marked his first steps in his musical career, collecting his first successes. In 2026 he returns to the Sanremo Festival together with 29 other Big names, including Tommaso Paradiso, Arisa, Chiello, Fedez & Masini, Fulminacci, Ditonellapiaga, Elettra Lamborghini, Francesco Renga, Dargen D’Amico and Patty Pravo.
What Raf was like as a child: memories of family education
We all know him as a singer-songwriter with a long career in the music world, but how was Raf as a child and adolescent? He himself said (in an interview with Corriere della Sera) to have been shy as a child and having received avery strict family upbringingespecially from the father.
“With mine padre I have lived two lives – explained Raf -. Childhood, when my brother and I didn’t have a good relationship, it couldn’t even be called a relationship, we were terrified, but we must also put it into context, they were years in which the cuff was allowedthe educational slap let’s say, even if my father went far beyond this, he had the idea that children must be educated with extreme rigidity, and therefore there was no dialogueit was a truly sidereal distance.”
The choice to move to Florence was dictated not only by the desire to graduate from the art institute and start taking the first steps in music, but also to emancipate yourself from the family reality and the rigid education received: “The situation was not so dramatic as to have to escape, there were also other factors, including the desire to know other places, to try to make music at all costs and to go and look for it where it could be done”, he said.
In Florence, in particular, he was looking for “a place in the world where I wouldn’t feel like the strange one, as well as a desk at the Porta Romana Art Institute – he said in the interview with Vanity Fair -. Dad hoped that sooner or later I would get tired and go home. Mum sent me some money in secret, she was worried”, concluded the famous singer-songwriter, underlining however that after his first successes the relationship with his father was improved.
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