Raffi Semerdjian
Music Composition, Performance Artist and Painter
June 20-August 15, 2024
Raffi is a songwriter and multimedia artist from Los Angeles, CA. His practice of several art forms coupled with a practical background in creative digital technologies has manifested a self-sustaining artistic pursuit culminating in an array of work, born from poetry – but spanning across songwriting, painting, and mixed/multimedia. Under the moniker Palm of Granite, Raffi’s been a performing songwriter for almost two decades, singing from a catalog of original songs.
“In the short period of seven weeks at Baraka, I was able to tune into my craft—refined and marinated with song ideas of recent years, wrote and composed new music, established meaningful friendships and collaborations with musicians in the area, performed at local venues, and have scheduled several performances in different communities in the Hudson Valley over the coming months.
The land here was fertile with inspiration. The weather was the ultimate provocation. But self-provoked was sometimes the coldest. It was seven weeks of self-study. Seven weeks of facing the fool. Some things fester, while others fade—we learn to make peace with the skin we must shed—the deals we’ve made with ourselves.
Here, I submitted myself to the experiment of being a troubadour in 2024, with 20 years of songs in a 20-year-old car.”
Raffi’s gift to the community culminated with an intimate, meaningful performance of his songs within the wood and stone of the land at Baraka. Raffi on guitar was accompanied by Adam Post on bass guitar and Michael Alan Hams on drums.
