Meet Raffi Joe Wartanian | Writer, Musician, Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Raffi Joe Wartanian and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Raffi Joe, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Growing up, I was fortunate to be surrounded by music, art, and an appreciation for history. My grandparents and great-grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide, and my parents were displaced by the Lebanese Civil War. My siblings and I were the first generation in our family to be born in the US, in the great city of Baltimore, Maryland. We were raised speaking Armenian at home, eating delicious Lebanese Armenian food, and learning our ancestors’ stories – their trauma and resilience – which became more vivid during summertime visits to be with family in Beirut, Lebanon. This intersection of cultures, rooted in Armenian and American customs, is something that storytelling – through writing, music, and service – has helped me process and understand.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
On a macro level, I’m a multiplatform storyteller passionate about social justice, creativity, and innovative institutions. I seek to engage creativity and service to connect with other humans, share experiences, discover insights, and be inspired. I am the grateful recipient of much inspiration from my family, teachers, friends, and strangers who said or did or made something that moved me. These flashpoints of inspiration carried with them a spirit of equity and integrity, and so the work I pursue is 1) an expression of gratitude to those who inspired me, 2) an effort to express something authentic about who I am and what I am experiencing as a human in a given moment, and 3) a gesture to relate with others — even if it’s just one person — in a meaningful, substantive way, and maybe even move them to continue the cycle onward through their own work, whatever that may be, with the same ethos of gratitude, innovation, and service, and 4) a hope to leave the world a better place than I found it.

Practically speaking, I seek out ways to explore these macro level objectives through writing, music, and service. As a writer, I have been blessed in the past few years to publish personal essays unpacking the identity into which I was born as the grandson and great-grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors, the son of Armenian parents displaced by Lebanon’s civil war, and as the brother of a US Army Veteran. These topics have inspired my work leading writing classes, workshops, and programming in numerous settings – with incarcerated writers at Rikers Island Jail, veterans at the Manhattan VA, youth in Armenia through a conflict transformation letter writing campaign to youth in Azerbaijan, undergraduates at UCLA, and others. Though each group’s needs may differ, I noticed a common thread of needing to tell important stories conveying particularities which invariably shed light upon deeper dimensions of the universal human experience. As a musician, I have developed projects as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist informed by regional folk idioms I love and am rooted in from the Mediterranean to Appalachia. I released my second album, Critical Distance, right before the pandemic. It’s something like Armenian folk meets Appalachian bluegrass in a Brooklyn tango bar. These were instrumental compositions mostly on the guitar, with some mandolin and oud, an ancient string instrument that is inspiring my latest series of compositions.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
RESTAURANTS
Carousel
Fish King
Bon Vivant

HIKES, TRIPS & OUTDOORS
Millard Falls
Beaudry Loop
Annenberg Beach House
Pacific Surfliner train ride along the coast

VENUES & SHOPS
Abril Books
The Greek
Gold Diggers
Venice Drum Circle

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I dedicate this to the indigenous Armenian people of Artsakh who, as of this writing on 22 September 2023, are enduring a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Azerbaijan’s ruthless dictator. I have visited Artsakh on several occasions, and was always struck by the generosity, ingenuity, and integrity of the local population. This is a dark time for Armenians around the world, and so I wish to recognize these specific people, along with my own grandmother, Knarig Baloumian Koroukian, who was born in a refugee camp of Armenian Genocide survivors and, at 92 years old, continues today to live a life of love, humanity, and creativity.

Website: https://www.raffijoewartanian.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raffijoe/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RaffiJo

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RaffiJoeWartanian 

Others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cidtYNnrB-g

Image Credits
I included credits in the photo files. The main two are: 1) Anastasia Italyanskaya // headshot photo with instruments and Brooklyn Bridge 2) Beverly Funkhouser // photo with lanterns in Baltimore pier