In his pedagogical tasks, Rubalcaba displayed the same devotion to duty, advising his students about the combination and subordination of music-theoretical knowledge to practical activity in the performance of one or more instruments, while playing alone or within an ensemble, as is widely recommended in present-day guides.
[citation needed] Rubalcaba used cakewalk rhythms in many of his songs, creating popular compositions like Los pinareños, Linda Mercedes, Ulpiano y su contrabajo and Hay que echar manteca.
[citation needed] Even though his most significant contribution was the arrangement for his song El cadete constitucional, in which he cleverly included the melody of John Philip Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever [2] – 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.