Hey, I'm
Raul.

I grew up in Brazil with drumsticks in my hands. Conservatory, then university, then a master's level obsession with Afro-Brazilian music. I was the guy campaigning against everyone learning drums the same imported way, trying to build methods that produced players who sounded like themselves.

Then one trip changed everything. I went to a favela in Recife to get closer to the roots of Brazilian rhythm, and I met the best musicians I had ever seen. No theory. No method. No conservatory. Just groove, joy and truth. I walked out with the conviction that has driven everything since: formal and informal music education each have something the other desperately needs. My job is to connect them.

I have been trying ever since, in every format I could get my hands on.

At 22 I founded Escola de Música Pontuada, the first in-home music school in Brazil. It grew to around 100 teachers. I taught drums at university, and played and recorded with artists I still can't believe said yes to me, like Mônica Salmaso, Teco Cardoso and Toninho Ferragutti. My favorite band was a free improvisation trio. Three albums. Zero hits. Wonderful.

Life then took me through Argentina, where I co-founded an animation studio, through a short MBA at UCLA, and eventually to Valencia, Spain, where I joined a startup called Jeff as roughly employee number 80. Two years later we were 800 and I was the HR Director, rebuilding every department in the middle of COVID. That is where I learned my other craft: building organisations.

Somewhere in all of that, honesty requires me to say, I stopped practicing seriously. More than ten years without a real routine. If you ever needed proof that sustaining practice is the hardest problem in music education, I am it.

Which brings me to now.