Hipolito “Tito” Rubio’s music—flamenco—is enjoying a great deal of currency these days. Writing in the New York Times, Jon Pareles observes that “Flamenco has been fused every which way lately: reharmonized with jazz, molded into pop songs [and] combined with Afro-Caribbean rhythms.” Yet, in spite of the contemporary excitement surrounding flamenco, Tito Rubio’s renditions of the music are hauntingly filled with its traditions. The sound of his guitar echoes across some five hundred years, recalling the turbulent political landscape of Andalusia in southern Spain. There, a cosmopolitan, multicultural society of Moors, Jews, and Gypsies was threatened by the conquest of Catholic kings. “It was in the outcry of these oppressed people that that Flamenco cante (singing) was born,” Rubio writes. “In the Flamenco voice you hear the call to prayer from the minarets of the Moors, and the Sephardic chants and songs of the 9th century.” Melodies of different cultures and eras blend in the music, and a harmony that may be at best fleeting in life is rendered lasting in music.

Rubio’s music is not performed for its beauty (which is considerable) so much as for its expressive and social significance. “Our purpose is not aesthetic nor to entertain others,” he writes, “but to come together as one . . . to express something inside ourselves which we have no other way to express.”

Rubio’s powerful, mournful flamenco music has much to say to a world afflicted by continued division and oppression. Listening to the synthesis of cultures suggested by Rubio’s music, one finds hope that out of suffering something new maybe born.

Tito Rubio is a flamenco guitarist who has studied with master players such as Pascual de Lorca, Jesus Torres, David Serva, and Paco de Cadiz, in both Spain and Australia for many years. He is the musical director for all performances of Flamenco del Encuentro. Since 2002, he has served as musical co-director of Herencia Arabe, a flamenco and middle-eastern music and dance ensemble. He has toured the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Kuala Lampor, Penang, Singapore, Portugal, Morocco, and Spain. He has taught flamenco guitar and AMLA Latin School of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Institute for Spanish Arts in Santa Fe, N.M. He is currently the musician-in-residence at the Philadelphia Folklore Project.