Rico Raja

In the family of Rico, everybody or almost is a musician, thus it’s not amazing that very early, the young Rico followed the way drawn by its olders! The difficult thing in such an environment is to find the right instrument. He started to learn the alto saxophone at the academy of Allonnes but turned rather quickly to the guitar, pulled by his sisters who at that time were singing the hits of Brassens, Brel, Le Forestier or the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Neil Young. The imitation has played its role and Rico does not complain about it.

On the road

As a teenager, Rico already knows a lot of songs and plays them here and there, walking on the roads of France, an acoustic guitar over the shoulder. He stops on the beaches where he plays his arpeggios at the very moment when he devotes to the finger-picking. And then it is in a cinema that the revelation will occur, after seeing the movie of the Woodstock festival. Those things can transform the life of a musician. Sure Rico will not forget his first loves, the folk song and the blues, but henceforth its musical life will be electric!

Decibels

It is with an internal and adolescent revolt that Rico forms his first group " Dynamic Fusion " with some friends, a group where the influence of Jimi Hendrix was seen not only in the music… Quality was not there maybe still but the fury and the energy were, some spectators didn’t always follow their musical experiences, which were usually involuntary. Rico still remembers some anecdotes of that period. During his first concert in his hometown, in front of more than 2500 persons attending the annual official reception organized by the municipality, the band was opening for the French singer Hugues Aufray. The band had to convince with ferocity the guy in charge not to not draw the red curtain in the middle of the show as the mayor had requested to make them stop. Knowing the taste of that guy for rockabilly music, the band began a Chuck Berry tune to please him. It worked and the show ran to its end!

Some time later, a similar scene occurred at the city theater when the drummer of the band, arriving late, was going to tumble in the middle of the show while another one had taken its place at the last moment. " Wait for me, I’m coming! " he shouted from the far end of the hall. There was a surrealist show with two drummers striking their toms… with a perfect delay! The organizer of the evening ordered straightaway to stop the concert pleading it was inaudible. It was naturally without counting on the municipal officer who once again left the curtain open!

Huh… Of course!

In his first band, it was no less than three guitars and during an interview, a journalist asks who plays the bass … Silence, because the question was right and obviously they needed a bass to balance the sound of the band. Decision is taken, this role will fall to Rico! The bass of its debuts, Rico keeps it lovingly, it symbolizes the big bend of his musical career. After the end of the band, Rico continued the bass and he learned about a lot of musical styles as samba, afroklezmer, funk, jazz, etc. He met many musicians of varied backgrounds and cultures, always keeping one foot in the blues, loyalty obliges! It is then that thanks to its friend JeanBa Laya he joined the band Sunblood. The hysterico-Hendrix accents of the guitar of Carmine the Indian and the drum beating of Eric the White will do it right, their fates are bound.