“Talk about finding solid gold on Amie Street Music! The Cuban All Star Band aka the Buena Vista Social Club, has gotta be the motherlode of Cuban music. The all stars of Cuban BC Big Band (Before Castro) era had a huge American following in Hot & Hip Havana from the Prohobition to the 1950s.
have a listen here
On the track, "Chan Chan," the late, great godfather of the son-bolero style, Compay Segundo, performs his own world famous composition with lead singer, Eliades Ochoa. That unmistakable four-chord opening "son" is Buena Vista Social Club's calling card!
Some of you might recall Wim Wenders' amazing 1997 award-winning documentary entitled "The Buena Vista Social Club," that showcased Old Havana's golden age of big band music during the 1940s.
In those days there were fraternal social clubs for all kinds of interests: cigar clubs, literary clubs, music clubs. Think mens' clubs, like the Bohemian Club. There was one Afro-Cuban music club, the Buena Vista Social Club which was abolished, the music nearly lost forever when socialism "abolished" racism. But hey, it gave us a communist-sanctioned version of mambo called salsa.
These world-class Cuban musicians who invented the mambo, lost their livelihood under the throes of communism, the king of mambo Perez Prado fled to Mexico and Ibriham Ferrer, the veritable honey-voiced Nat King Cole of Cuba, was reduced to shining shoes on the streets of Havana for pocket money.
Kudus to Ry Cooder who was instrumental in resurrecting these neglected stars of the golden Cuban musical tradition that languished some 40 years. Cooder's three resulting CDs, by "Los Super abuelos" (super grandaddies) of Cuban music, The (Afro) & the Cuban Allstars, and The Buena Vista Social Club, took off like wildfire—almost entirely by word of mouth.
The most famous CD, the Grammy award-winning album, the Buena Vista Social Club (1997), recorded in six days in Havana's vintage RCA-EGREM studio, went on to sell over 6 million copies, worldwide. Not bad for word of mouth.
Cooder was later prosecuted and fined for breaking the US trade embargo Trading with the Enemy Act.
These old Havana musicians really are super abuelos. Imagine this: Compay Segundo (1907-2003), who invented a seven-stringed musical instrument similar to an Andean charango, called the armónico, came to world fame at the age of 93 and in 2003, he recorded his final album, "Las Flores de la Vida" at the tender age of 96.
Ry Cooder said of his passing:
"The last of the best,
the oracle,
the source,
the one who represents where it all flows from"
is gone from us.
Horsemen, pass by.
Showing posts with label mambo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mambo. Show all posts
Thursday, October 4, 2007
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