buena vista social club album download Buena Vista Social Club (1997) In March 1996 the London-based record label World Circuit arranged a recording trip to Havana, Cuba. In just over two weeks three albums were recorded*. All three were released to great critical and public acclaim. The third album, ‘Buena Vista Social Club™’ was released in June 1997 and has since come to be regarded as a classic, selling 8 million copies worldwide. Juan de Marcos González, the founder of the Afro Cuban All Stars and Sierra Maestra, had a long cherished dream of recording the music of Cuba’s golden era, the 1940s and 1950s, with the original musicians of that time. This was a dream that he shared with Nick Gold, the owner of World Circuit. Together they planned to record a collaboration between a number of African and Cuban guitarists. Gold invited Ry Cooder to participate, the two having worked together before on Ali Farka Toure’s Grammy Award-winning ‘Talking Timbuktu’ (WCD040). Cooder replied within hours saying he would be there. The Africans failed to make the trip but recording went ahead anyway. ‘Buena Vista Social Club’™ is both the name given to this extraordinary pool of musicians and the album, recorded in just six days in Havana’s 1950s vintage EGREM studios. It was clear from the atmosphere of the recording sessions that something very special was taking place. However, no one could have predicted that Buena Vista Social Club™ would become a worldwide phenomenon, outselling any other record in the same genre, elevating the artists to superstar status and popularising Cuba’s rich musical heritage, all of which has contributed to a massive boom in Cuba’s tourist and recording industries. The album has an intimate, natural charm that comes from musicians totally at ease with other, sharing a deep passion and understanding for the music, playing a repertoire suggested by themselves. Arrangements and instrumentation were worked out during recording according to the feel of the individual songs, and the vast majority of the performance was recorded ‘live’ in one or two takes. The album features the vocals of septuagenarian Ibrahim Ferrer, a star from the 1950s who was literally called in off the streets on the first day of recording after years of musical inactivity . Also on vocals is the only woman on the album, the great bolero singer, Omara Portuondo “the Edith Piaf of Cuba” (Cooder). Omara happened to be in another studio rehearsing and Cooder invited her upstairs to record. On piano is the brilliant Rubén González veteran of Arsenio Rodríguez’s early 1940s band whom Cooder describes as “the greatest piano soloist I have ever heard in my life.” On guitar and vocals is Eliades Ochoa the great country musician who was flown in for these recordings from Santiago in the east of Cuba. The oldest musician on the album is the 89 year old giant of Cuban music, guitarist and vocalist Compay Segundo. According to Cooder, “the whole album turned on Compay. He was the fulcrum, the pivot. He knew all the best songs and the way to do them. Well, he’s been doing them since World War One.” These featured musicians are joined by a host of Cuba’s greatest players including Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López on bass, Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal on trumpet, and the percussionists from the band Sierra Maestra. The album includes an extraordinary variety of Cuban styles from the city sounds of Havana to the country style of Santiago and the songs cover a range of the island’s history, from ‘La Bayamesa’ written in 1869 to ‘Chan Chan’, a recent composition by Compay Segundo. The enthusiasm that surrounded the Buena Vista Social Club™ album soon became apparent. and the charm of the music inspired Wim Wenders to make a film about these amazing musicians. Shot mainly in Cuba, the film also features concert footage from the group’s only performances in the Carré Theatre, Amsterdam and Carnegie Hall, New York. The film has delighted audiences around the world and has contributed to the extraordinary success of this project, and the re-emergence of some of Cuba’s finest musicians. The Buena Vista Social Club™ phenomenon has transformed the careers of Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo who have continued to record with World Circuit. Under the title of ‘Buena Vista Social Club™ presents…’ the three stars have each released their debut albums for the label and have all achieved huge success.** ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ ™has a timeless quality. This is a music that transcends the vagaries of mere fashion and an album which is destined to be regarded as a classic for years to come. Buena Vista Social Club. This album is named after a members-only club that was opened in Havana in pre-Castro times, a period of unbelievable musical activity in Cuba. While bandleader Desi Arnaz became a huge hit in the States, several equally talented musicians never saw success outside their native country, and have had nothing but their music to sustain them during the Castro reign. Ry Cooder went to Cuba to record a musical documentary of these performers. Many of the musicians on this album have been playing for more than a half century, and they sing and play with an obvious love for the material. Cooder could have recorded these songs without paying the musicians a cent; one can imagine them jumping up and grabbing for their instruments at the slightest opportunity, just to play. Most of the songs are a real treasure, traversing a lot of ground in Cuba's musical history. There's the opening tune, "Chan Chan," a composition by 89-year-old Compay Segundo, who was a bandleader in the '50s; the cover of the early-'50s tune "De Camino a la Verada," sung by the 72-year-old composer Ibrahim Ferrer, who interrupted his daily walk through Havana just long enough to record; or the amazing piano playing on "Pablo Nuevo" by 77-year-old Rubén González, who has a unique style that blends jazz, mambo, and a certain amount of playfulness. All of these songs were recorded live -- some of them in the musicians' small apartments -- and the sound is incredibly deep and rich, something that would have been lost in digital recording and overdubbing. Cooder brought just the right amount of reverence to this material, and it shows in his production, playing, and detailed liner notes. If you get one album of Cuban music, this should be the one. Buena Vista Social Club. Buena Vista Social Club is an ensemble of Cuban musicians established in 1996 to revive the music of pre-revolutionary Cuba. The project was organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González. They named the group after the homonymous members' club in the Buenavista quarter of Havana, a popular music venue in the 1940s. To showcase the popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, many of whom had been retired for many years. Musicians: Luis Barzaga Joachim Cooder Ry Cooder Julio Alberto Fernández Ibrahim Ferrer Carlos González Juan de Marcos González Rubén González Salvador Repilado Labrada Manuel 'Puntillita' Licea Orlando 'Cachaito' López Benito Suárez Magana Manuel 'Guajiro' Mirabal Eliades Ochoa Omara Portuondo Julienne Oviedo Sánchez Compay Segundo Barbarito Torres Alberto 'Virgilio' Valdés Lázaro Villa. Buena Vista Social Club Sheet Music. Musicnotes features the world's largest online digital sheet music catalogue with over 400,000 arrangements available to print and play instantly. Shop our newest and most popular Buena Vista Social Club sheet music such as "Chan Chan" , "Dos Gardenias" and "Macusa" , or click the button above to browse all Buena Vista Social Club sheet music. Download our free apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC and interact with your sheet music anywhere with in-app transposition, text & highlighter markup and adjustable audio/video playback. Plus, organize your music into folders and set lists and much more! Free MP3 download: De Camino a la Vereda by Buena Vista Social Club. The Grammy Award–winning Buena Vista Social Club are responsible for the biggest-selling world music album to date and continue to sell out venues across the globe over 10 years after their eponymous debut was released. One of those performances, featuring the complete original band, was the one-night-only concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on July 1 1998. The New York Times wrote: "The concert was more than a musical occasion. Musicians from Cuba in their 70's, 80's and 90's, some emerging from retirement, were making their United States debuts at no less than Carnegie Hall. With the bittersweet delicacy of a classic bolero, the Buena Vista Social Club simultaneously celebrated the vitality and virtuosity of its musicians and mourned the era they embody." Now for the first time, that legendary performance will be released on a special two-disc CD set on October 13 and guardian.co.uk/music has an exclusive free download of De Camino a la Vereda. And you can watch highlights from their legendary performance at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1998..