RaffyLissa is a Dominican Christian duo made up of a married couple, Raffy and Lissa. Both were born in the Dominican Republic and they work out of Hollywood, Florida. By their own account they had been at the project for nineteen years and had written some two hundred songs.

Two routes in

They arrived from opposite directions. Lissa grew up inside the church. Raffy came from merengue: their biography says he spent a long stretch in Dominican merengue groups, among them Los Kenton, alongside his brothers before he turned to Christian music in the early nineties.

That crossing — a merengue singer who leaves the dance circuit for the church — is an old pattern in Dominican music.

Cubriendo Mi Universo

The album came out on 28 February 2012: twelve songs, fifty-one minutes. Hoy Te Quiero Adorar, Jesús, Sin Ti Mi Señor, Pobre Gozo, Mil Razones, Yo Prefiero, the title track and Carne de Mi Carne are the ones that circulated.

Carne de Mi Carne is the most unusual of them. It is a duet by a married couple about marriage itself, taking the phrase Adam uses for Eve — flesh of my flesh — and treating the institution as the subject of the worship rather than the setting for it.

Writing

Lissa published a book in 2009, ¿Es Cristo mi Modelo?, arguing that a person can live well against the pull of the surrounding world. The book gave its name to a blog, and the blog to the YouTube channel where the duo’s videos sit. They keep a second blog under their own name, given over to short devotional pieces rather than to the music.