What is Raffi's Net Worth?
Raffi is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and activist who has a net worth of $10 million. Raffi is best known for creating children's music. Among his most popular children's songs are "Bananaphone," "Baby Beluga," "Down by the Bay," and "All I Really Need." A leading global advocate for children's rights, Raffi founded the Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring to address the needs of kids around the world. To date he has released over a dozen albums which have sold over 12 million copies in North America alone. He is widely considered the most popular children's singer in the Western world.
Early Life
Raffi Cavoukian was born on July 8, 1948 in Cairo, Egypt to Armenian parents who had fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide. He is named after the eponymous, renowned 19th-century Armenian novelist, and has two siblings named Onnig and Ann. In 1958, Raffi and his family immigrated to Canada, eventually settling in Toronto. There, Raffi's father was a prominent portrait photographer.
Career Beginnings
In the early 1970s, Raffi frequented a Toronto guitar store called Millwheel, where he met other fledgling Canadian musicians. Among them was folk guitarist John Lacey, who helped Raffi with his finger picking. Raffi went on to play folk guitar in coffee houses in Toronto and Montréal. In 1972, he hitchhiked to Vancouver in the hopes of finding fame, but was not immediately successful. Returning to Toronto a few years later, Raffi found success singing at a public school in Toronto.
(Photo by Paul Harris/Getty Images)
Recording Career
Through his label Troubadour Music, Raffi released his first album of children's music, "Good Luck Boy," in 1975. That was followed in 1976 by "Singable Songs for the Very Young," which included such songs as "Down by the Bay," "Robin in the Rain," and "The Sharing Song."
Raffi released two albums in 1977: one for kids, "More Singable Songs," and one for adults, "Adult Entertainment." He closed out the decade with "The Corner Grocery Store." In 1980, Raffi released the album "Baby Beluga," featuring the popular title song. Among its other songs were "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" and "All I Really Need." Raffi's subsequent albums during the decade included "Rise and Shine," "Raffi's Christmas Album," "One Light, One Sun," and "Everything Grows." These albums included such songs as "The Wheels on the Bus," "De Colores," "Just Like the Sun," and "Let's Make Some Noise."
Raffi's first album of the 1990s was "Evergreen Everblue," an eco-themed album for an older audience. He next released "Raffi on Broadway" in 1993. The year after that, Raffi put out "Bananaphone," best known for its pun-filled title track. He subsequently released the concept album "Raffi Radio," recorded in the fashion of an old-time radio show. After a seven-year hiatus from releasing new music, Raffi came out with "Let's Play" in 2002. His albums following that included "Where We All Belong" and "Communion." In the 2010s, Raffi released "Love Bug," "Owl Singalong," and "Dog on the Floor." He has also released some non-album singles, including "Wave of Democracy," written in support of US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and "Young People Marching," written as an homage to young environmental activist Greta Thunberg. In 2022, with Lindsay Munroe, Raffi released the album "Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times."
Books
Raffi has written books for both children and adults. His children's books, which are mostly based on his songs, include "Shake My Sillies Out," "One Light, One Sun," "Baby Beluga," and "Down by the Bay." For adults, Raffi penned the autobiography "The Life of a Children's Troubadour," which was published in 2000. He later wrote the 2013 book "Lightweb Darkweb: Three Reasons to Reform Social Media Before it Re-forms Us."
Child Honouring
In the 21st century, Raffi came up with the concept of "Child Honouring," his vision for fostering a humane and sustainable world through the support of children's needs. Along with Dr. Sharna Olfman, he co-edited an anthology book entitled "Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around," which outlines the titular philosophy and argues for its value in restoring the world's communities and ecosystems. The book features a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and chapters by such thinkers as David Korten, Mary Gordon, and Barbara Kingsolver.
Through his Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring, Raffi advocates for children's rights, including the right of all kids to live free of commercial exploitation. In 2006, he was given the Fred Rogers Integrity Award for his consistent refusal of commercial endorsement offers to market his work to children. Later, in 2012, Raffi and his Foundation partnered with Sandy Garossino and Mark Busse to found the Red Hood Project, which seeks to protect children from the harmful influence of the Internet.
