about
Classic flamenco, Latin American guitar and original pieces. All in the repertoire of Andalusia-educated guitarist Afra Rubino. Trained by Spanish masters in her craft she presently operates from her native Gothenburg.
Today...
…I have an umbrella name for the music I create and it’s “Atlantic flamenco”. The name refers to my great interest in what is called pre-flamenco and proto-flamenco – the musical currents that shaped flamenco music until the end of the 19th century when it took its current form. Among these we have the Afro-Andalusian heritage and the Latin American heritage (heritage from Spain’s colonial era with trade across the Atlantic, including the slave trade), but also older influences such as the Sephardic music that spread across the Mediterranean in the 16th century.
Since 2017, I run the duo project “The Double Bass Project” with double bassist Peter Janson, in which we weave together melodies from Spanish Baroque, classic flamenco, original pieces and improvisations. The project also plays with the flamenco rhythms and cadences that influenced Manuel de Falla’s music. And since 2022, I’ve also been running the project “The Midnight Andalusians” – music for string quartet and flamenco guitar, which weaves together the past with the present and is based on the Fandango, a concept that used to be much more than what we know today as the Fandango style in flamenco.
In 2020-21 I was part of creating the opera-flamenco performance “Carmen Recycled” where Bizet’s and Merimée’s Carmen is played by a quartet consisting of opera singing, woodwind, flamenco dance and flamenco guitar with the aim of recycling the story’s terrible gender roles and turning them into a story of freedom and the right to own one’s own history.
I am involved in running the flamenco scene FlamencoFredag in Stockholm (house band, programmer, web editor) which hosts flamenco acts from the Nordics and Europe and I tour as a freelance guitarist in many different contexts, including as a permanent member of the band Trio Sonrisa with the children’s show “Musikresan till Kuba”, and several duo projects.
As a solo act I play and teach at flamenco and guitar festivals in Sweden and Europe (e.g. Hamburg’s guitar festival, “Flamenco On Fire” in Pamplona, London Guitar Summit, Helsingborg’s guitar festival, Guitar and Lute Festival, Planeta Festival) or for various municipal, regional, non-profit or private organizations.
Back in the day...
…, in 2012, I was included in the Spanish documentary “Tocaoras” as one of the few foreign female flamenco guitarists and in 2017 I was one of five female guitarists who portrayed in a large reportage in the Spanish magazine El País under the name “Ellas dan el toque” (“The women tackling the macho world of flamenco guitar”, in the English version). That same year I had the honor to opened for flamenco guitar legend Vicente Amigo and toured with Spain’s premier female flamenco guitarist Antonia Jiménez. In 2018, I performed at flamenco festivals in Spain together with percussionist Nasrine Rahmani and collaborated on this occasion also with flamenco legend Paco de Lucia’s harmonica player Antonio Serrano and Spain’s most sought-after double bass player, Javier Colina.
In 2018-19 I toured regularly with Swedish flamenco guitarist Robert “Robi” Swärd.
In December 2017, I was awarded the STIM scholarship (Swedish Composer’s International Music Bureau Composition Scholarship) and in 2016 the “Guitar People’s Prize” under the category “Up and coming”, where I was nominated by classical guitar master Göran Söllscher.