humble heroes | rafael devánte sinay | KB9

Session with guitarist, producer and artist Rafael Devánte Sinay. KB9 was specially composed for this humble heroes session. Rafael graduated from the conservatory of Amsterdam, jazz department. He comes from a musical family, always being surrounded by music. Rafael started playing guitar when he was about 12 years old. He has South American and Moluccan roots and you can hear that back in his music and guitar playing. He plays with artists and acts such as Pete Philly, Cho, Gino-Cochise, Yung Nnelg, Jael and has his own band Smandem together with Kick Woudstra (drums), Yariv Vroom (percussion), Gino-Cochise (bass), Anan Ya’ari (keys), Latanya Alberto (vocals). When being young Rafael was a fan of the rapper Cho, recently he played a show with him at Afas Live. Then he realized this was a dream came true. During covid Rafael was forced to take a break from playing gigs, which gave him the chance and space to develop himself as producer. He produced the song Duality and The Royal Escape EP was the first project which he was executive producer for. “In 2021 it was 70 years since Moluccans came to the Netherlands and I was asked to do a gig. At first I was just going to do a gig with my band, but I ended up asking if I could fill in this special day myself and ended up getting carte blanche. I put together a show in which not only music played a starring role, but also film, dance, spoken words, visual art, everything around telling a story. This always remains a special experience for me because it was an enormous honor and I noticed that being involved with all kinds of art disciplines and thus composing a larger piece is something that made me feel in my element and stimulated a kind of higher creativity in me.” We hope you enjoy the session of Rafael Devánte Sinay!