Buena Vista Social Club

The Buenavista Social Club was a members-only club originally located in Buenavista (literally good view), a quarter in the current neighbourhood of Playa (before 1976 part of Marianao), one of the 15 municipalities in Cuba's capital, Havana. The original club was founded in 1932 in a small wooden venue at calle Consulado y pasaje "A" (currently calle 29, n. 6007). In 1939, due to lack of space the club relocated to number 4610 on Avenue 31, between calles 46 and 48, in Almendares, Marianao. As seen in the Buena Vista Social Club documentary, when musicians Ry Cooder, Compay Segundo and a film crew attempted to identify the location of the club in the 1990s, local people could not agree on where it had stood. At the time, clubs in Cuba were segregated; there were sociedades de blancos (white societies), sociedades de negros (black societies), etc. The Buenavista Social Club operated as a black society, which was rooted in a cabildo. Cabildos were fraternities organized during the 19th century by African slaves. The existence of many other black societies such as Marianao Social Club, Unión Fraternal, Club Atenas (whose members included doctors and engineers), and Buenavista Social Club, exemplified the remnants of institutionalized racial discrimination against Afro-Cubans. These societies operated as recreational centers where workers went to drink, play games, dance and listen to music. In the words of Ry Cooder, As a music venue, the Buenavista Social Club experienced the peak of Havana's nightclub life, when charangas and conjuntos played several sets every night, going from club to club over the course of a week. Often, bands would dedicate songs to the clubs where they played. In the case of the Buenavista Social Club, an eponymous danzón was composed by Israel López "Cachao" in 1938, and performed with Arcaño y sus Maravillas. In addition, Arsenio Rodríguez dedicated "Buenavista en guaguancó" to the same place. Together with Orquesta Melodías del 40, the Maravillas and Arsenio's conjunto were known as Los Tres Grandes (The Big Three), drawing the largest audiences wherever they played. These vibrant times in Havana were described by pianist Rubén González, who played in Arsenio's conjunto, as "an era of real musical life in Cuba, when there was very little money to earn, but everyone played because they really wanted to". After the Revolution Shortly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, newly elected Cuban President Manuel Urrutia Lleó, a devout Christian, began a program of closing gambling outlets, nightclubs, and other establishments associated with Havana's hedonistic lifestyle. This had an immediate impact on the livelihoods of local entertainers. As the Cuban government rapidly shifted towards the left in an effort to build a "classless and colourblind society", it struggled to define policy toward forms of cultural expression in the black community; expressions which had implicitly emphasized cultural differences. Consequently, the cultural and social centers were abolished, including the Afro-Cuban mutual aid Sociedades de Color in 1962, to make way for racially integrated societies. Private festivities were limited to weekend parties and organizers' funds were confiscated. The measures meant the closure of the Buena Vista Social Club. The occurrence of these closures and the change in traditions is the simplest explanation of why many musicians were out of work, and why their style of music had declined before the Buena Vista Social Club made it popular again. == Album ==

{{Listen In 1996, American guitarist Ry Cooder had been invited to Havana by British world music producer Nick Gold of World Circuit Records to record a session in which African musicians from Mali were to collaborate with Cuban musicians. it transpired that the musicians from Mali had not received their visas and were unable to travel to Havana. Cooder and Gold changed their plans and decided to record an album of Cuban son music with local musicians. Communication between the Spanish and English speakers at the studio was conducted via an interpreter, although Cooder reflected that "musicians understand each other through means other than speaking". and ending with a rendition of "La Bayamesa", a romantic criolla composed by Sindo Garay (not to be confused with the Cuban national anthem of the same name). The sessions also produced material for the subsequent release, Introducing...Rubén González, which showcased the work of the Cuban pianist. It sold more than one million copies and won a Grammy award in 1998. In 2003 it was listed by the New York-based Rolling Stone magazine as #260 in The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. == Musicians ==

player and singer Compay Segundo, a prominent figure in the ensemble, in 2002, a year before his death at the age of 95. Born Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz but given the nickname Segundo (second), he was traditionally a "second voice" singer providing a baritone counterpoint harmony. On the Buena Vista Social Club recording, Segundo provides both voices on the song "¿Y tú qué has hecho?", written in the 1920s by his friend Eusebio Delfín. (). A total of twenty musicians contributed to the recording including Ry Cooder's son Joachim Cooder, who at the time was a 19-year-old scholar of Latin percussion and provided drums for the band. Ry Cooder himself played slide guitar on several songs and helped produce and mix the album, afterwards describing the sessions as "the greatest musical experience of my life". Ry Cooder had been a successful American guitarist since the 1960s, recording with Captain Beefheart and the Rolling Stones. Known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music led him to record music from diverse genres including Tex-Mex, Hawaiian and Tuvan throat singing. He was later prosecuted and fined $25,000 by U.S. authorities for his work on the Buena Vista Social Club, having broken the Trading with the Enemy Act, a clause that forms part of the ongoing United States embargo. Many of the Cuban musicians who featured on the album were at their musical prime in the 1940s and 1950s. After the success of the 1997 record they became known in Cuba as "Los Superabuelos" (the Super-Grandfathers). Juan de Marcos González, a Cuban folk revivalist who was younger than the bulk of performers introduced Cooder to veteran singer Ibrahim Ferrer. Ferrer (1927–2005) had been lead vocalist for bandleader Pacho Alonso, and also sang for Beny Moré, Cuba's most prominent performer in the 1940s, before his soft singing style fell out of fashion. Having found the semi-retired seventy-year-old Ferrer taking his daily stroll on the streets of Havana and shining shoes for extra money, González signed him up for the project. Cooder later described the discovery as something that happens "perhaps once in your life", and Ferrer as "the Cuban Nat King Cole". Ferrer became a prominent member of the group, and the success of the record was attributed in part to the popularity of his vocal performances. Virtuoso pianist Rubén González (1919–2003) also had further success releasing two solo albums after working on the initial project. González was a pianist for bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez in the 1940s, and is attributed with helping establish Cuban piano styles that were to dominate Latin music for the remainder of the century. Despite suffering from arthritis and not even owning a piano at the time of recording with Cooder, (due to an infestation of termites whilst living in South America) After the success of the 1997 record, González recorded and toured with bassist Orlando "Cachaíto" López, who was the only musician to play on all of the songs on the Buena Vista Social Club album. "Cachaito" (1933–2009) was the son of multi-instrumentalist Orestes López and the nephew of fellow bassist Israel "Cachao" López, the brothers often attributed with inventing the mambo. Named after his prestigious uncle, "Cachaito" (little Cachao) was a leading Descarga musician in the 1950s and 1960s, a musical form that takes its influence from modern jazz, and he became the ever-present bassist at Buena Vista Social Club performances and recordings. and fellow and singer Manuel "Puntillita" Licea (1927–2000), who had performed with Celia Cruz and Benny Moré. Additional improvised percussion was provided by Amadito Valdés and Carlos González. The youngest established member of the group was Barbarito Torres, (b. 1956) a virtuoso player of the laúd, a Cuban offshoot of the lute. Trumpet was provided by Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, (1933-2024) who went on to release solo records under the Buena Vista presents... title. == Film ==

, who shot the documentary Buena Vista Social Club in 1999. Shortly after returning from Havana to record the Buena Vista Social Club album, Ry Cooder began working with German film director Wim Wenders on the soundtrack to Wenders' film The End of Violence, the third such collaboration between the two artists. According to Wenders, it was an effort to force Cooder to focus on the project, "He always sort of looked in the distance and smiled, and I knew he was back in Havana." Although Wenders knew nothing about Cuban music at the time, he became enthused by tapes of the Havana sessions provided by Cooder, and agreed to travel to the island to film the recording of Buena Vista Social Club Presents: Ibrahim Ferrer, the singer's first solo album, in 1998. Wenders filmed the recording sessions on the recently enhanced format Digital Video with the help of cinematographer Robert Müller, and then shot interviews with each "Buena Vista" ensemble member in different Havana locations. Upon completion of filming, Wenders felt that the film "didn't feel really like it was a documentary anymore. It felt like it was a true character piece". Critics were generally enthusiastic about the story and especially the music, although leading U.S. film critic Roger Ebert and the British Film Institute's Peter Curran felt that Wenders had lingered too long on Cooder during the performances; and the editing, which interspersed interviews with music, had disrupted the continuity of the songs. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 1999. It won best documentary at the European Film Awards and received seventeen other major accolades internationally. == Live performances ==

who sang "El Carretero" on the record. In the film, Ochoa is shown playing the song whilst walking alongside a deserted railtrack. The first performances by the full line up of Buena Vista Social Club, including Cooder, were those filmed by Wenders in Amsterdam and New York. Other international shows and television appearances soon followed with varying line ups. Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González performed together in Los Angeles in 1998 to an audience that included Alanis Morissette, Sean Combs, and Jennifer Lopez, Ferrer dedicating the song Mami Me Gusto to the Hispanic Lopez. Performances in Florida, which has a large Cuban exile and Cuban American community, were rare after the release of the film due to the political climate. In the late 1990s, a concert by Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba turned into a near riot when concert goers were attacked and spat at by protesters opposed to the Cuban government. When "Buena Vista" musicians played for a music industry conference at Miami Beach in 1998, hundreds of protesters chanted outside and the convention center hall was cleared briefly because of a bomb threat. In 1999, Ferrer and Ruben González were forced to cancel Miami shows citing fears for their safety after fellow-Cubans Los Van Van drew 4,000 protesters at a previous show, and Compay Segundo was forced to cut short a 1999 Miami performance due to another bomb threat. When touring the U.S., the Cubans are only entitled to their per diem (transportation and lodging) and are not permitted performance fees due to the U.S. embargo. In 2001 a Buena Vista Social Club (with Ibrahim Ferrer) performance was recorded in Austin for PBS and broadcast on Austin City Limits in 2002. Musicians associated with Buena Vista Social Club have toured throughout the world as Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, and despite the deaths of six of the original members, the collective performed with many of the remaining ensemble members including Barbarito Torres and "Guajiro" Mirabal. Ry Cooder's guitar parts were handled by Manuel Galbán, Following a 2007 performance in London, a reviewer at The Independent described the ensemble as "something of an anomaly in music business terms, due to their changing line-up and the fact that they've never really had one defining front person", adding, "It's hard to know what to expect from what is more of a brand than a band." == Cultural impact ==

, Havana. October 2002 , where Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club were received in 2015. The international success of the Buena Vista Social Club generated a revival of interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music as a whole. Musical director Juan de Marcos felt that the recordings serve "as a symbol of the power of Cuban music, and which to a certain degree have contributed to Cuban music regaining the status it always had in Latin American and world music." Cuba's burgeoning tourist industry of the late 1990s benefited from this rebirth of interest. According to The Economist, "In the tourist quarters of Old Havana it can seem at times as if every Cuban with a guitar has come out to sing the songs that Buena Vista made famous. It's as if you were to go to Liverpool and find bands singing Beatles songs on every street corner." The songs Buena Vista sings are often not their own compositions. Some songs they sing have long been popular in Cuba and people have always performed them in the street. Despite the appeal of the "Buena Vista" ambience to tourists, Cubans themselves were less aware of the "Buena Vista Social Club" than international music listeners. This was due to the foreign nature of the production, and the dominance of modern Timba, Songo and other musical forms on the island. Some explain that Buena Vista did not impact the Cuban audience, as they were not creating anything new; they were just playing the same songs that Cubans know and have been playing for many years. Mari Marques, a Cuban American who leads cultural tours to Cuba, contests that the preponderance of traditional musicians was not solely a consequence of the "Buena Vista Social Club". Marques believes the notion that some music had been completely neglected in Cuba is "a romantic exaggeration that was propagated by U.S. media coverage", and the reality is that son trios have existed "everywhere in cities such as Santiago de Cuba in the east of the island." British Socialist Workers Party member and Marxist writer Mike Gonzalez believes the ensemble provoked a backward glance to "timeless, sensual places where dreams and desire merged in a comfortable, evocative music". Gonzalez asserts that the aura evoked did not represent "the real Cuba" before the revolution of 1959, nor Cuba in the modern era, but that the Cuban government were happy for the tourist industry to "enjoy the fruits of this confusion". The American Historical Review suggested that the Buena Vista Social Club's mise en scène fueled nostalgic, idealistic feelings not only of many Americans and Cubans in the United States who remember the Havana of the 1950s, but also of Cubans in Cuba. The result was a reminiscence about the pre-revolutionary era—dominated by the politics of Gerardo Machado in the 1920s–30s and then General Fulgencio Batista until 1959—which "no longer seems so bad". A stage musical adaptation with the same name as the album and focusing on the history and performers of the group was staged Off-Broadway in 2023. The musical moved to Broadway in 2025, garnering ten Tony Award nominations and winning four. == Discography ==

Buena Vista Social Club albums • Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records,16 September 1997) • Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 14 October 2008) (live album) • Lost and Found (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 23 March 2015) (collection of previously unreleased tracks) • Buena Vista Social Club (25th Anniversary Edition) Other releases Solo albums The below discography includes solo albums released since the first Buena Vista Social Club album that feature the musicians in the ensemble, and that are considered to be under the "Buena Vista Social Club" aegis. • Rubén González • Introducing... Rubén González (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 17 September 1997) – with Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Manuel "El Guajiro" Mirabal, Ry Cooder and Manuel Galbán • Chanchullo (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 17 September 2000) – with Ibrahim Ferrer, Eliades Ochoa, Cheikh Lô, Amadito Valdés and Joachim Cooder • Barbarito Torres • Havana Cafe (Atlantic Records, 6 April 1999) – with Manuel "El Guajiro" Mirabal, Ibrahim Ferrer, Pío Leyva and Omara Portuondo • Ibrahim Ferrer • Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 8 June 1999) – with Rubén González, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Ry Cooder, Manuel Galbán • Buenos Hermanos (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 18 March 2003) – with Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Ry Cooder and Manuel Galbán • Mi Sueño (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 26 March 2007) – with Orlando "Cachaíto" López, Manuel Galbán, Rubén González, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, Omara Portuondo, Amadito Valdés • Eliades Ochoa • Sublime Illusion (Higher Octave, 29 June 1999) – with Ry Cooder • Omara Portuondo • Buena Vista Social Club Presents: Omara Portuondo (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 25 April 2000) – with Pío Leyva, Rubén González, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo and Amadito Valdés • Flor de Amor (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 25 May 2004) – with Barbarito Torres, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez and Manuel Galbán • Orlando "Cachaíto" López • Cachaito (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 22 May 2001) – with Juan de Marcos González, Amadito Valdés and Ibrahim Ferrer • Amadito Valdés • Bajando Gervasio (Primienta Records, 10 December 2002) – with Barbarito Torres • Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal • Buena Vista Social Club Presents: Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 4 January 2005) – with Ibrahim Ferrer, Pío Leyva, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Omara Portuondo, Juan de Marcos González and Manuel Galbán Various artists • Rhythms del Mundo: Cuba (Universal Music, 14 November 2006) – with Ibrahim Ferrer, Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Barbarito Torres, Amadito Valdés, Omara performing alongside Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Dido, Quincy Jones, Kaiser Chiefs, Radiohead, U2 and Jack Johnson == See also ==