Announcer, great interviewer, owner of an acid humor, lover of relaxed talks on the air, Rafael "Rafa" Hernández died Tuesday at dawn, after feeling a strong pain in the chest and going to the guard of the Italian Hospital. It was a fulminant heart attack. He was 66.
Rafa's career accompanied the growth of FM in Argentina: in the early '80s he worked with Graciela Mancuso and Alfredo Rosso in FMR, then he had programs on Radio Del Plata with journalists such as Sergio Marchi, and in 1985 he reached Rock & Pop and was his distinctive voice in commercials and separators in the first time where there was 24 hours of rock.
The farewell of Radio Nacional to the beloved Rafa Hernandez. Photo IG
He also had his own programs such as the legendary Piso 93 with Martín Pérez and columnists such as Patán Rajendorfer, Claudio Kleiman, Alfredo Rosso, Enrique Symns and the duo Pedro Saborido and Sebastián Borensztein, who later led him to be an announcer for Tato Bores.
I went on Sunday nights, and there came the main musicians of Argentine rock in search of a good talk, for example Indio Solari and Skay Beilinson.
"My best moment," he once said, "was when Rock & Pop opened. Everything was to be done and we were really looking forward to it. We had fun like crazy. We lived on the radio!"
Witness and protagonist of an era
Born in Pehuajó, he came to Buenos Aires in the middle of the dictatorship and became from below living in pensions where he fed his dream of studying radio. He worked on fixing fire extinguishers and Drago siphons, took his first steps in front of the microphone and slowly built a path thanks to a luminous voice and an overflowing personality.
Witness and protagonist of a golden age of radio in the middle of Alfonsin's spring, Rafa Hernández became part of the history of local radio.
Rafa Hernandez in "Piso 93" at Rock & Pop, with Claudio Kleiman and Martín Pérez, among others. Photo IG
At the end of the 90s he was summoned to a new FM called La Roca, where he was also the official voice of the station, and had his own programs.
During the last years he was a staff announcer at Radio Nacional, where he had programs such as El Rastrojero Fantasma, a sort of continuation from Nacional Folkórica of what was his passage through El Tren Fantasma, with Omar Cerasuolo.
All those who knew and listened to him will miss him.
MFB
See also
