Radio Tarifa

Among the leading world music ensembles at the close of the millennium stands Radio Tarifa. The ensemble draws its name from the Andalusian port of Tarifa, Spain’s southernmost point closest to Morocco. Although fusions of Spanish and North African traditions already existed, as in the work of Juan Peña Lebrijano, the trio pursued a different path by returning to the shared musical heritage that predated the 1492 expulsion of Moors and Jews from Iberia. From this vantage they envisioned an alternate tradition incorporating not only Spanish and Arabic elements but also broader Mediterranean, medieval, and Caribbean influences—an approach that, while compelling on its own terms, also illuminates the deeper origins of Spanish forms such as flamenco.

Before the breakthrough of their debut album, Rumba Argelina, the project existed only as a core trio that recruited additional musicians for studio sessions. The three members are Spaniards Faín Sánchez Dueñas, who plays percussion and other instruments, and Benjamín Escoriza on vocals, together with French wind player Vincent Molino, occasionally credited as Vincent Molino Cook. Dueñas, who also serves as arranger, functions as the group’s conceptual leader; he and Molino had earlier established the early-music ensemble Ars Antiqua Musicalis, devoted to late-medieval and Renaissance repertoire, though that venture never achieved commercial success. Dueñas later encountered the flamenco troubadour Benjamín Escoriza, who had been raised among Gypsies, thereby completing the original nucleus.

Rumba Argelina, an ambitious labor of imagination and sonic experimentation, was recorded in 1993. World Circuit Records issued it across Europe in 1996, after which a partnership between World Circuit and Nonesuch brought the album to American listeners in 1997. Its acclaim enabled Radio Tarifa to assemble a permanent touring ensemble that has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and it paved the way for the 1997 follow-up Temporal—whose title translates as “Storm.” That record turned toward the foundational sources of flamenco, adopting a less expansive Mediterranean scope than its predecessor, yet it too met with strong reception. Cruzando el Rio reached audiences in spring 2001.