SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio music community is mourning the loss of Conjunto Heritage Taller co-founder Rodolfo S Lopez. The 83-year-old died of lung cancer on Saturday, September 23.
Though his twelve-string guitar has gone silent, his music will continue to echo in the people he taught.
Reminiscing about watching a documentary about Stevie Ray Vaughn with her father Rodolfo Lopez in his hospital room, Leticia Lopez-Spicer remembers he commented at the title of the song “The Sky is Crying.”
"It doesn't rain in San Antonio hardly ever,” Lopez-Spicer said Monday, getting ready to attend his wake.
“But, sure enough today."
As far as the Lopez family is concerned, the sky was crying for Rodolfo.
Lopez-Spicer remembers her father as a tender man who wore a tough facade.
"I gave him a run for his money and high school and would get in trouble and get grounded,” Lopez-Spicer said. “And he always felt guilty. He's like, okay, I think you've learned your lesson like a day or two in."
Lopez died of mesothelioma; a type of lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Leticia believes her father was exposed while deployed in Vietnam.
"Dad was tall and skinny,” Lopez-Spicer said. “He would go in there and crawl into the little cavities that other people couldn't fit in and, you know, go fix things.
She says he had many pursuits, but music was his swan song. He started learning the guitar when he was 50 years old.
“He'd never played it before, took it up and then loved it so much,” Lopez-Spicer said. “He traveled the world with his bajo sexto.”
He grew to love conjunto music so much he that helped found Conjunto Heritage Taller to teach people about the musical style marked by duo acts playing the accordion and twelve-string "bajo sexto" guitar.
"He touched so many different people, unbeknownst to me and unbeknownst to many of us, how he never met a stranger," Lopez-Spicer said.
