Jacobo Rubalcaba

Jacobo González Rubalcaba (1895–1960) was a Cuban musician, composer, bandleader and educator. Born in Sagua La Grande, he adopted his mother's maiden name for professional use.

Biography Rubalcaba showed deep interest in music from his early years. When he turned 15 , he received musical training at an academy in his hometown in addition to his work as a tailor. – a musical thread that was commonly used at the time. According to musicologist Ned Sublette, part of the danzón's success in the early 1900s was its ability to incorporate and absorb all sorts of melodic traditions as the contradanza had previously done. Sublette added that light classics of the nineteenth-century European repertoire were endlessly danzonized, as were popular themes from ragtime and a variety of Cuban genres.

Rubalcaba was also the founder of one of the greatest musical dynasties in Cuba, as many of his descendants would follow in his footsteps to become directors and instrumentalists. His son, the pianist Guillermo Rubalcaba, was the founder of the legendary Charanga Rubalcaba, while his grandson, the pianist and composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba, is one of the most important figures to emerge from Afro-Cuban jazz in the 1990s.

Jacobo Rubalcaba died in 1960 in a traffic collision, while he was travelling from Havana to his home of Pinar del Río.