Buena Vista Social Club: 25 years of the album that brought the best Cuban musicians out of retirement

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The dawn of the last century brought Cuba the warm airs of traditional Spanish music that the island’s artists reinterpreted by adding percussion Afro-Cuban and the inheritance of their ancestors, slaves of the Spanish colonies. A mixture that received the name of they are cuban. With the influence of jazz arriving from the United States and the proliferation of tourism on the island before the revolution, the genre exploded in terms of popularity and number of performers.

Thus, Havana and Santiago they became the nerve centers of a songbook that grew relentlessly during the first half of the 20th century. Proliferating groups that performed their music in cabarets and social clubs, where they danced and played throughout the night.

In 1959, the president Manuel Urrutia León The progressive closure and nationalization of the majority of Cuban music nightclubs began. This situation, added to the ‘Special measures’ taken in 1968, dealt a fatal blow to the son. Without clubs in which to interpret and with the interest of the regime turning towards the salsa and the Nueva Find. Many of the artists who achieved fame and fortune in the years before Castroism were forced into forced retirement.

Isolation by blocking and the secrecy of the regime, relegated the Cuban son to a lethargy that would last decades. The songs languished between the Malecón and the streets of Havana, invoked by local musicians and the tapes that managed to cross to the United States.

However, in March 1996 things changed drastically for the musicians who had helped to magnify this style. Nick Gold and Ry Cooder They undertook a project that brought legendary artists out of retirement, a living history of a music that, paradoxically, would live its best years at the end of the millennium. The final product was a double disc that brought together the legacy of they are cuban, performed by artists of the stature of Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Rubén González u Omara Portuondo placeholder image among others. Now Buena Vista Social Club celebrates 25 years with a reissue that includes unpublished material from those sessions. Improvised and discarded songs, with the constant noise of the coming and going of the musicians as a backdrop, breathing life and music in each chord that came out of the EGREM studios.

From Africa to Cuba

When Gold was a teenager Mole Jazz —A small record store in the London neighborhood of King Cross — was the one that whetted the producer’s appetite for Cuban music. What little inheritance was left of those songs had been reinterpreted by African groups, heirs of a music that they made their own and that they kept alive for years. “Had it not been for these African artists, Buena Vista Social Club would never have existed”says the producer over the phone.

Slaves from the west coast of Africa were sent to the colonies, carrying with them a musical tradition that in the mid-twentieth century would make a return trip through commercial radio and the sale of records in countries such as Mali. With the creation of the seal World Circuit, Gold embarked on three decades of work dedicated to taking music out of its borders, restoring it to the relevance and flavor that it had in its countries of origin. After collaborating with the African musician Ali Farka Touré and meeting the American Ry Cooder, Gold decided to mix Malian and Cuban musicians in the same album, gathering parallel paths, lost for decades.

“We had everything ready when days before we started recording they told us that they had denied the visas of the Malian musicians.” Gold and Cooder had to improvise a different album. With the help of Juan de Marcos González, leader of the Cuban band Sierra Maestra, they managed to reorganize the sessions and find a cast of musicians that would end up forming Buena Vista Social Club.

Forgotten musicians

Ibrahim Ferrer he had spent the last decades of his life in the ostracism with which age condemns musicians. Disillusioned with the music industry and its future, he was enjoying a bitter retirement that had distanced him for years from the boleros that had made him so popular as a singer half a century earlier.

Ruben Gonzalez He was also experiencing a forced retirement from the piano, caused in part by the disease that was beginning to stiffen his bones. None of this was enough to keep them away from an experience that would change their lives and to which they added the illusion of someone starting over again. “Once [Rubén] he started playing the piano and never stopped doing it, it was the soundtrack of everything that happened in the studio “explains his producer, Nick Gold.

This is how they arrived at the studio Cachaito Lopez (low) and ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal (trumpet), who were joined Eliades Ochoa on guitar, a fundamental piece when it comes to bringing together the greatest artists of Cuban son under one roof. Finally appeared Second Compay, cornerstone of recordings. “Ry claimed that ‘having Compay was like having Louis Armstrong’, Juan de Marcos corrected him and told him that it was like ‘having the bible’ “.

Compay carried the history of the Cuban songbook on his skin. “Every time I raised my voice to say something everyone was silent”, Gold explains about some sessions that not only served to relaunch the careers of these musicians, but also brought many of them together for the first time in the same project. “Everyone knew who each other was, but it wasn’t until Good view that they could record together “.

Eliades Ochoa and Compay enjoyed success off the island. The former had signed with the Mexican label Corazón a few years earlier; the second with Warner in Spain, thus making his music cross the ocean again. Others, however, experienced during those sessions an exciting return to music that was to become their last legacy. “Rubén told me what excited him the most was that people were finally listening to him” apunta Gold.

Twenty years

The studies EGREM had welcomed artists of the stature of Josephine Baker O Nat King Cole. Cooder, along with the World Circuit engineers, placed two ambient microphones, capturing the spaciousness of the room and everything that was happening inside. Twenty-five years later we are still able to feel the heat and humidity that colors these sessions, with the musicians close together, feeding each other back.

“The recording room was large and rectangular full of wood paneling, it looked like a sports hall“explains the producer.” When Ry arrived, he decided that all the musicians would play together in the room, looking at each other and sharing the same space. “Cooder would remember years later” the unity of Cuban music “, surprised by the camaraderie and naturalness with which the group connected immediately.

Out of the spontaneity of the sessions came collaborations that captured the magic with which the album was permeated. Omara Portuondo placeholder image, which enjoyed a certain international projection at the time, was recording in one of the neighboring rooms. A fleeting visit to meet with old friends and collaborators gave rise, in a single shot, to the habanera Twenty years. “We recorded everything that happened in the room, we never knew what we could use later, so we decided to record everything.”

Legacy

In the documentary that Wim Wenders produced three years later, the protagonists of Buena Vista Social Club hint at the need to transmit their latest legacy to the world. The last bars of a life dedicated to music and that for decades had been silenced by the blockade and the lack of opportunities on the island.

The resounding success of the album would open the doors to solo albums and tours around the world. At Carnegie Hall in New YorkDuring the memorable concert that Wenders captured on film, a visibly emotional Ibrahim looked directly at the camera to announce: “Very soon I will learn a few words in English so I can defend myself.” The prelude to a life that was beginning to march again, with new opportunities.

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