BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Buena Vista Social Club: Compay Segundo (vocals, guitar, congas); Eliades Ochoa (vocals,
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guitar); Ibrahim Ferrer (vocals, bongos, clave); Ry Cooder (acoustic & electric slide guitars, guitar, oud, bolon, mbira, percussion); Ruben Gonzalez (piano).Additional personnel includes: Juan de Marcos Gonzalez (conductor, guiro, background vocals); Julio Alberto Fernandez (vocals, maracas); Manuel Puntillita Licea (vocals, congas); Omara Portuondo (vocals); Benito Suarez Magana (guitar); Barbarito Torres (laoud); Manuel Guajiro Mirabal (trumpet); Orlando Cachaito Lopez, Salvador Repilado Labrada (bass); Joachim Cooder (drums, udu drum, dumbeck, conga); Alberto Virgillo Valdes (maracas, background vocals).Recorded at Egrem Studios, Havana, Cuba, March, 1996. Includes liner notes by Nick Gold and Nigel Williamson.BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance.That Ry Cooder, you've got to keep an eye on him every minute, or he jumps into another cross-cultural collaboration. In the wake of his landmark recordings TALKING TIMBUKTU with Ali Farka Toure and A MEETING BY THE RIVER with V.M. Bhatt comes BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, essentially a supergroup of traditional Cuban musicians with the addition of international agitator Cooder. Somehow, Cooder always finds just the right space to slide his sinuous slide guitar into, so that it works in almost any context. Here, amidst the multi-layered percussion, piano and Cuban guitar rhythms, Cooder's slide simultaneously finds a home and eggs the ensemble on. The natural beauty of the Cuban tonal and rhythmic palette is the real star of BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, evoking both a sense of mystery and a feeling of intense emotional satisfaction.[Reviews]Spin (9/99, p.156) - Ranked #71 in Spin Magazine's 90 Greatest Albums of the '90s.Village Voice (2/24/98) - Ranked #21 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.Q (1/98, p.112) - Included in Q Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 1997.Rolling Stone (9/18/97, p.104) - 3.5 Stars (out of 5) - ...revisit[s] the lovelorn ballads, patriotic hymns and gentle son-based dance numbers heard in swank Havana lounges as far back as the 1920s....enduring reminders that in Cuba, the wisdom of the ages still counts for something.Vibe (11/97, p.152) - ...The beguiling fusion of Cooder's twangy slide guitar with the danzon and other, conga-tinged Afro-Hispanic rhythms...makes for an exciting multicultural marriage...Entertainment Weekly (10/03/97, p.85) - ...The rhythms vary, but the sound is gentle yet flamboyant throughout. It brims with warmth. - Rating: B+n
Buena Vista Social Club
When the album Buena Vista Social Club was released it quickly became a world-wide
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phenomenon selling millions of copies internationally and winning a Grammy. When Ry Cooder traveled to Cuba again in early 1998 to record a solo album with Ibrahim Ferrer - again with all the musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club - Wim Wenders accompanied him with a small film crew observing the musicians in the studio and tracing their lives in Havana. The film continued in the Spring in Amsterdam where Buena Vista Social Club gave two concerts and ended finally in the summer in New York with a triumphal concert at Carnegie Hall. The result is an inspiring and uplifting story of a group of incomparable musicians recreating a bygone era with their fascinating reminiscences and awesome music.
Buena Vista Social Club
When the album "Buena Vista Social Club" was released it quickly became a world-wide
... more
phenomenon selling millions of copies internationally and winning a Grammy. When Ry Cooder traveled to Cuba again in early 1998 to record a solo album with Ibrahim Ferrer - again with all the musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club - Wim Wenders accompanied him with a small film crew observing the musicians in the studio and tracing their lives in Havana. The film continued in the Spring in Amsterdam where Buena Vista Social Club gave two concerts and ended finally in the summer in New York with a triumphal concert at Carnegie Hall. The result is an inspiring and uplifting story of a group of incomparable musicians recreating a bygone era with their fascinating reminiscences and awesome music.
Buena Vista Social Club -
Ry Cooder's name has helped bring attention to this session, but it's the veteran Cuban
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son musicians who make this album really special. Reminiscent of Ellington in its scope and sense of hushed romanticism,Buena Vista Social Clubis that rare meld of quietude and intensity; while the players sound laid-back, they're putting forth very alive music, a reminder that aging doesn't mean taking to bed. Barbarito Torres's laoud solo on "El Cuarto de Tula" is both more blinding and more tasteful than any guitar showcase on any recent rock album; a quote from "Stormy Weather" and some very distinct parallels to Hawaiian styles remind us of why it's called "world music."--Rickey Wright
son musicians who make this album really special. Reminiscent of Ellington in its scope and sense of hushed romanticism, Buena Vista Social Club is that rare meld of quietude and intensity; while the players sound laid-back, they're putting forth very alive music, a reminder that aging doesn't mean taking to bed. Barbarito Torres's laoud solo on "El Cuarto de Tula" is both more blinding and more tasteful than any guitar showcase on any recent rock album; a quote from "Stormy Weather" and some very distinct parallels to Hawaiian styles remind us of why it's called "world music." --Rickey Wright
with the forgotten greats of Cuban music, many of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them long since retired. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club, became a Grammy-winning international bestseller. When Cooder returned to Havana in 1998 to record a solo album by 72-year-old vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, filmmaker Wim Wenders was on hand to document the occasion. Wenders splits the film between portraits of the performers, who tell their stories directly to the camera as they wander the streets and neighbourhoods of Havana, and a celebration of the music heard in performance scenes in the studio, in their first concert in Amsterdam, and in their second and final concert at Carnegie Hall. The songs are too often cut short in this fashion, but Buena Vista Social Club is not a concert film. Wenders weaves the artist biographies with a glimpse of modern Cuba remembering its past, capturing a lost culture in music that is suddenly, unexpectedly revived for audiences in Havana and around the world. Wenders makes his presence practically invisible, as if his directorial flourishes or off-screen narration might deflect attention from the artists, who do a fine job of telling their own stories through interviews and music. It's a loving portrait of a master class in Cuban music, with a vital cast of ageing performers whose energy and passion belie their years. --Sean Axmaker
phenomenons of the 1990s. A record of one astounding revival, it has in turn perpetuated that revival, providing a whole new lease of life--and a lucrative international platform--for a music that was lost to many people. Wenders gives credit where it's due--to world music guru Ry Cooder who travelled to Cuba in 1996 to seek out the soneros, performers hugely popular in the 1930s, 40s and 50s; made an album with them, the Buena Vista Social Club (Buena Vista being an area of Havana); and launched them on stage in Amsterdam and New York. But he also asked Wenders if he wanted to come along for the ride, and in March and April 1998, Wenders, on the spur of the moment with only a minimal crew ("concepts are for sissies"), travelled to Cuba and Amsterdam, and followed the newly popular stars: among them Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo and Ruben Gonzalez. The result was a remarkable international film sensation. They call this "the book of the film", and that's what it is. Of the 141 photographs, Wim Wenders provides the colour images and Donata Wenders some atmospheric black-and-white shots. The background to the whole enterprise is fleshed out with illuminating comments from Wenders and the performers (oddly laid out on the page as verse) an interview with Ry Cooder, song lyrics in Spanish and English, and mini-biographies of all involved. Fans of the film will no doubt want this to add to their Buena Vista collection--but first-time patrons of the Social Club would be well advised to invest in the one element of the film this beautiful-looking book can't provide: the CDs that contain the insistent music that is, after all, its raison d'etre--music that is, as soneros addict Wenders writes, "infectious and lively as it is wise and soothing".--Alan Stewart
..."Music is a treasure hunt. You dig and dig and sometimes you find something."(Ry Cooder, 1999) I had heard of BuenaVistaSocialClub for many years but only recently I dug out this treasure and started to appreciate it. Sometime ago I saw the documentary film about BuenaVistaSocialClub on FilmFour; I was so captured by the music in the film that I ordered the CD album straight away from Internet.
Ry Cooder, the producer of the CD, said in the introduction, "In Cuba the music flows like a river. It takes care of you and rebuilds you from inside out." I could not agree more. Ry Cooder was a popular American guitarist who took a keen interest in world and folk music; in 1997 he went to Havana and hunted down a number of old age musicians to record this fabulous album. Just look at their age (at the time of recording), e.g., Compay...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
...After watching a programme on television about the BuenaVistaSocialClub, I was inspired to buy this CD. And, I was not disappointed!
I don't usually buy music from this genre but I was soon dancing around the room 'shaking my booty'! - not a pretty sight!!
The front CD cover shows Ibrahim, wearing a leather cap, looking as though he's had a great deal of life's experiences and enjoyed them along the way! The plastic CD cover is also covered by a cardboard one.
This CD is the first solo album by Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer. He was born in 1927 in Santiago and he moved to Havana in 1957, where he has lived ever since. He was well-known in Cuba for his singing, mainly as a backing singer for other groups, but it was not until he appeared with the BuenaVistaSocialClub, that he gained a more international recognition...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: variety - there are tracks to dance to and ones to chill to Disadvantages: ry cooder's slide guitar;
...BuenaVistasocialclub has broken through the boundaries of genres and become as popular as some rock and pop albums. It is a tribute to the musicianship of the hugely experienced individuals who feature on this album that every song has so much emotion and depth.
As for Ry Cooder, contribution to the songs is ambivalent. The slide guitar on "Chan Chan", "El Cuarto De Tula" and "Dos Gardenias" is in my opinion subtle and atmospheric; however on others it is annoyingly intrusive for example on "BuenaVistaSocialClub" and "Ay Candela".
This intrusion is even more evident in the film where during the new york concert at the end of the film the havanan musicians give Ry more than one "Shut up" glare.
Still, this album is an essential addition to any well-rounded record collection - if you only have one album of cuban music it has...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 14.06.2000
(28.11.2000)
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