The Buena Vista Social Club was a members club in Havana, Cuba that held dances and musical activities, becoming a popular location for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s. In the 1990s, nearly 50 years after the club was closed, it inspired a recording made by Cuban musician Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder with traditional Cuban musicians, some of whom were veterans who had performed at the club during the height of its popularity.
The recording, named Buena Vista Social Club after the Havana institution, became an international success, and the ensemble was encouraged to perform with a full line-up in Amsterdam in 1998. German director Wim Wenders captured the performance on film, followed by a second concert in Carnegie Hall, New York City for a documentary that included interviews with the musicians conducted in Havana. Wenders's film, also called Buena Vista Social Club , was released to critical acclaim, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary feature and winning numerous accolades including Best Documentary at the European Film Awards.
The success of both the album and film sparked a revival of international interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music in general. Some of the Cuban performers later released well-received solo albums and recorded collaborations with international stars from different musical genres. The "Buena Vista Social Club" name became an umbrella term to describe these performances and releases, and has been likened to a brand label that encapsulates Cuba's "musical golden age" between the 1930s and 1950s. The new success was fleeting for the most recognizable artists in the ensemble: Compay Segundo, Rubén González, and Ibrahim Ferrer, who died at the ages of ninety-five, eighty-four, and seventy-eight respectively; Segundo and González in 2003, then Ferrer in 2005.
Social club
The Buena Vista Social Club members-only club was located in the populous Marianao neighborhood, in Cuba's capital Havana. According to Juan Cruz, a former master of ceremonies at the Salon Rosado Benny Moré nightclub in Havana, the club was located "on Calle 41 between 46 and 48". 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.
The club was run along the lines of a Cabildo, a community cofradía (fraternity or guild) dating back to Spanish colonialism. Cabildos in Cuba developed into Sociedades de Color , social clubs whose membership was determined by ethnicity, at a time when slavery and racial discrimination against Afro-Cubans was institutionalized. Sociedades de Negros (Black Societies) existed throughout Cuba, and Havana boasted a number of closely linked organizations including the Marianao Social Club, Union Fraternal, Club Atenas—whose members included doctors and engineers—and the Buena Vista Social Club itself.
According to American guitarist Ry Cooder,
Society in Cuba and in the Caribbean including New Orleans, as far as I know, was organized around these fraternal social clubs. There were clubs of cigar wrappers, clubs for baseball players and they’d play sports and cards—whatever it is they did in their club—and they had mascots, like dogs. At the Buena Vista Social Club, musicians went there to hang out with each other, like they used to do at musicians’ unions in the U.S., and they’d have dances and activities.
Prominent musicians that performed at the club during the 1930s and 40s include bassist Cachao López and bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez. Rodríguez's pianist Rubén González, who played piano on the 1990s recordings, described the 1940s as "an era of real musical life in Cuba, where there was very little money to earn, but everyone played because they really wanted to". The era saw the birth of the jazz influenced mambo, the charanga, and dance forms such as the pachanga and the cha-cha-cha, as well as the continued development of traditional Afro-Cuban musical styles such as rumba and son, the latter transformed with the use of additional instruments by Arsenio Rodríguez to become son montuno. Son, described as "the bedrock of Cuban music," has shaped much of twentieth-century Latin music, and had a strong impact on popular music, not only in Latin America, but also in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Closure of musical venues
Shortly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, new Cuban President Manuel Urrutia Lleó, a devout Christian, began a program of closing or nationalizing all 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 communism and an effort to build a "classless and colorblind 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. Although the Cuban government continued to support traditional music after the revolution, favor was given to the politically charged nueva trova, and poetic singer-songwriters such as Silvio Rodríguez. The emergence of pop music and salsa, a style derived from Cuban music but developed in the United States, meant that son music fell further out of favor with the Cuban authorities.
1968, the year of 'special measures' was even worse for those who played popular music. In the words of musician and writer Leonardo Acosta:
The occurrence of these closures is the simplest explanation of why so many outstanding musicians were out of work, and why their style of music had declined before the Buena Vista experience resurrected it.
Album
Main article: Buena Vista Social Club (album)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 where two African High-life musicians from Mali were to collaborate with Cuban musicians. On Cooder's arrival (via Mexico to avoid the ongoing U.S. trade and travel embargo against Cuba), it transpired that the musicians from Africa 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.
Already on board the African collaboration project were Cuban musicians including bassist Orlando "Cachaito" López, guitarist Eliades Ochoa and musical director Juan de Marcos González, who had himself been organizing a similar project for the Afro-Cuban All Stars. A search for additional musicians led the team to singer Manuel "Puntillita" Licea, pianist Rubén González and octogenarian singer Compay Segundo, who all agreed to record for the project.
Within three days of the project's birth, Cooder, Gold and de Marcos had organized a large group of performers and arranged for recording sessions to commence at Havana's EGREM Studios, formerly owned by RCA records, where the equipment and atmosphere had remained unchanged since the 1950s. 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".
The album was recorded in just six days and contained fourteen tracks; opening with "Chan Chan" written by Compay Segundo, a four chord son that was to become what Cooder described as "the Buena Vista's calling card"; and ending with a rendition of "La Bayamesa", a traditional Cuban patriotic song (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.
One of the songs that featured on the album was "Buena Vista Social Club", a song written by bass player "Cachaíto"’s uncle, Israel López, who also wrote Pueblo Nuevo, track 4 on the album. The song spotlighted the piano work of Rubén González and it was recorded after Cooder heard González improvising around the tune's musical theme before a day's recording session. After playing the piece, González explained to Cooder the history of the social club and that the song was the club's "mascot tune". When searching for a name for the overall project, manager Nick Gold chose the song's title. According to Cooder,
It should be the thing that sets it apart. It was a kind of club by then. Everybody was hanging out and we had rum and coffee around two in the afternoon. It felt like a club, so let’s call it that. That’s what gave it a handle.
Upon release on 17 September 1997, the CD became a huge "word of mouth hit", far beyond that of most world music releases. It sold more than five 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.
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