‘Buena Vista Social Club’ at 25: Memories of Memories


There was also something about the sounds of “Buena Vista Social Club”. It was recorded in real time at Havana’s venerable Egrem studio, on analogue tape, on a rickety tape recorder (which needed repair on the first day of sessions) and without any flashy finishing, which gave the music an extra patina. In 1996, you could never get that piano sound in a Los Angeles studio.

So in some ways there was a feeling that the album was a time capsule. But it wasn’t exactly like that; if you want a time capsule, you can easily listen real vintage records. “Buena Vista Social Club” was also deliberately retro. No matter how graceful the musicianship was, the singers’ voices had worn down with age, and they were muttering about decades of love. No one pretended that years had passed; Part of the appeal was that artists and songs had softened with age. The re-release includes some alternative song shots, and to me, the original selections sound like more casual, more casual ones.

GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Jon, I have a different memory that sounds like a nice counterpoint to yours. I was at the Cape Town Jazz Festival in South Africa 15 years after your visit to Cuba. One of the featured artists in the largest of the five stages, Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club. There were some “old men” of course, but there were also younger musicians who joined the band as it continued to tour, long after it was formed in 1996 – a sign of the strength of the Buena Vista Social Club nostalgia brand, but also Cuban music. They instructed the audience. But most of the songs they played were not like the original album; It certainly felt like a larger and certainly more danceable sampling of traditional Cuban music.

In the “Buena Vista Social Club” the tempo is slower and the horns are much less frequent; mostly guitars and voices, the sound of musicians throwing things in a Havana courtyard or around a kitchen table. You mean, Jon, about that this recording isn’t exactly a perfect time capsule, it sounds a bit like these musicians. to remember these songs (many of which are decades old original songs by band members). That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch the documentary: When these musicians perform, you can see them enjoying what these songs represent for them.

Isabelia, in your view, I think American audiences may be guilty of often thinking of listening to “world music” as an attempt at detection or detection. understand the music of an unfamiliar place that leads to an urge to freeze things and results in the kind of nostalgia you imply. I can’t help but think of “Buena Vista Social Club” in a lineage running through it. Alan Lomax and David Attenborough – Records that suggest, suspiciously, to provide a keyhole look to an entire musical culture – as far as I consider a “Cuban” record.



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