Known widely as the frontman for Buffalo hardcore band JEWELTONE, Daniel ‘Neftali’ Bonilla is also a gifted hop-hop artist who’s been bringing people together — and to their feet — for quite some time.
And perhaps nowhere was that ability more on display than at JEWELTONE’S October release show for its latest work, “Visions of Heaven” — a gig during which Neftali dually performed as an opening solo rap artist, and with his JEWELTONE bandmates, guitarist Christian Adams and drummer Jordan Walker.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Neftali now has been hard at work on his next solo hip-hop release tentatively titled ‘Daniel,’ a seven-song project for which a release party is planned for March 1 at Black Dots.
Looking back on his solo performance at the JEWELTONE show, Nef said after that gig, “people in the hardcore community who may have had an idea that I rapped, started realizing how serious it was.” And though some that night might not have been aware of his artistic versatility, the truth of the matter is that Neftali boasts a long history of bridging the gap between genres and fans.
In July 2018, Freak the Miighty, Nef’s first hip hop project, played a show that resulted in a mosh pit, the total destruction of the stage and a buzz that he and his group were something different in a hip hop scene that was already flourishing.
“Something just went off in us and the crowd and when we performed, we just went crazy,” Nef said. “There weren’t too many rappers having mosh pits and intense high energy in the crowd at the time. I’m not saying it never was done, but it wasn’t a prevalent thing” in the Buffalo hip-hop scene.
“When we performed, the day it happened, we broke the stage and everyone in the crowd, even the homeowners — it was a backyard show — were in there and just going crazy,” Nef recalled.
That energy soon became a staple of Freak the Miighty concerts.
Nef described the group’s crowds as a mixture of people from all walks of life — street people and drug dealers, members of the LGBTQ+ community and preppie kids of different ages — covering a spectrum of colors and ethnicities and bringing the kind of “crazy” for which he and his group became known.
“We had a song called ‘Black Gods.’ That was the song that got the reputation of being the ‘mosh song.’ Every time that ‘Black Gods’ would come on a certain energy would happen,” Nef said. “People would just expect to see something crazy. It was the perfect mixture of a scene beginning or catching. After Westside Gunn and Conway, there was this energy in the air that people thought ‘Oh, we can make it from Buffalo,’ so the energy was high across the board for local hip hop.”
Neftali also said that Freak the Miighty stood out as being unique in that, “how we
dressed was different, how we acted was different, how we talked in the songs was different,” and that the whole thing had a ‘punk rock flavor’ to it that other bands couldn’t express or were too busy staying current with the national rap scene to see as a viable style.
“We were amateurs. I don’t think that music was of a certain quality, but it was different, and you couldn’t deny there was something special about it,” he said.
Freak the Miighty gained fans from all parts of the city, including the hardcore scene and, according to Neftali, a split bill of hardcore and hip hop called “Secret Subculture” was being planned in the summer of 2021. This was right after the COVID-19 pandemic started loosening its grip in New York, Neftali said, and people were excited about being able to be together again.
“It was going to be three hardcore acts and two or three hip-hop acts and we, as Freak the Miighty, wanted to have a live band with us,” Neftali said.
The group approached the show with some trepidation because the notion of a hardcore and hip-hop show had been tried before, with mixed reactions. It was hard to compete with live instruments, Neftali said, as opposed to speakers and a few people on stage rapping.
“Live drums bring something out of you no matter what the genre being played is,” he said. “So, I was like, ‘this is our second time doing something like this. I don’t want to get that feeling like we’re just up there rapping, and I see some people leave the room.’ So, we made a set and saved some our songs for a live band… It was probably my favorite performance ever. Nobody walked out of that room.”
After that, it became clear Neftali had a talent for hardcore vocalizing. Then, after being introduced to Adams, his life in JEWELTONE was born.
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The dualities of Neftali’s work have always been a part of his life, some of which have been influenced by a practice of meditation and study. And now, with his new project, ‘Daniel,’ Neftali is delving back into that space of introspection.
“It’s definitely personal … it’s me coming to terms with the side of me that wrote ‘The Tower,’” a flowing stream of consciousness that examines depression, the pressure to succeed, American values and the internal struggle between wanting to do be good and wanting to fulfill desires.
“(‘Daniel’) kind of juggles the concepts of pursuing success and getting very caught up in the desire of it. Even in the creation of something, sometimes the desire is there, and I don’t like that, but everybody has that forever. Whatever the fuck people are into in their own lives,” Neftali said. “I’ve been doing this for seven, eight years, consistently cutting everything else in my life to make this shit work and there’s a lot of pain that comes with putting your heart into something and it not turning out how you want it to, or how you expect it to, but it still being there.”
He added, “I have put time into meditation, trying to get closer to God and whatever you want to call it, and that was a great time in my life, and I did make progress, but even still, there was still that pulling. A feeling in me to make it work through music and as I get older and deal with those things, that’s where this project came out of.
“I call it ‘Daniel’ because despite Daniel being my name, everyone calls me Nef. When I’m called Daniel, my subconscious goes into a certain different person than when people call me Nef… (but) there’s also this confidence that comes with Nef.
“Prior to music working out, life wasn’t the prettiest. ‘Nef’ and ‘Neftali,’ I’m proud of what I’ve done when I took that on. I feel stronger and more confident,” he said. “‘Daniel’ takes me to this different place. So, in this project I’m investigating that, and I won’t say I’m going too deep, but I’m exploring those concepts.”
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