Kirsty MacColl's Cuba

Part Six

Broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 7th March 2001

Cuban music's known around the world due to the phenomenal success of the Buena Vista Social Club CD, a gathering of Cuba's finest musicians organised by Ry Cooder and World Circuit record producer Nick Gold. Kirsty hears how the project became reality, and talks to legendary singers Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo about the making of the record in Havana's famous EGREM studios. There's music from the Buena Vista CD and from pianist Ruben Gonzalez, whose career was invigorated after the record's incredible success.

Buena Vista Social Club: El Cuarto de Tula

In 1996, composer, producer, and guitar legend Ry Cooder entered Egrem Studios in Havana 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, with a vital cast of aging performers whose energy and passion belie their years, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, Omara Portuondo, Isreal "Cachaito" Lopez and Compay Segundo.

Buena Vista Social Club / World Circuit LC2339. Composed by Marquetti.

Buena Vista Social Club: Amor de Loca Juventud

The band put together for the Buena Vista Social Club sessions in Havana spanned four generations, from a 13-year-old timbales prodigy, Julienne Oviedo, to the singer and guitarist Compay Segundo, then aged almost 90.

Buena Vista Social Club / World Circuit LC2339. Composed by Ortiz.

Omara Pourtuondo: Donde Estabas Tu?

In more than 50 years of professional life Omara Portuondo has walked Cuban songs throughout the world. Gifted with a ductile voice of wide registers, she sings the same a bolero as a ballad going through guaracha, son or jazz without loosing color or expressiveness. She is also an excellent communicator capable of establishing a musical dialogue of high complicity with the public. "Its because if I´m singing and in a given moment I say I'm in love, I must feel it and show it, because if I don't it will all seem very empty and false".

Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo / World Circuit WCD059. Composed by Ernesto Duarte.

Ibrahím Ferrer: Bruca Manigua

Ibrahím Ferrer was born at a social club dance on February 20, 1927 In San Luis, a town near Santiago, Cuba. He never looked back from that musical introduction to the world. At 13, he formed his first musical group with his cousin, called the Jovenes del Son (Young Men of Son). Ibrahim was called to sing with a succession of bands e.g.Conjunto Wilson, Conjunto Sorpresa and Orquesta Chepín-Chovén. By the 1950's he was established as the singer with Pacho Alonso's group based in Santiago and later Havana, and stayed with them for more than 20 years. Ferrer’s work consisted mainly of guanachas, sones and up-tempo numbers, although he yearned to sing boleros. He enjoyed some popularity with boleros but would have to wait nearly forty years to record one worthy of his considerable talents.

That song, Dos Gardenias by Isolina Carrillo, is featured on the Buena Vista Social Club recording. When a bolero singer of the old school was required for the sessions in 1996. Ferrer was plucked off the streets of Havana where he was taking his daily walk. Whereas the other stars from the Buena Vista sessions had originally some fame both in and outside of Cuba, Ibrahim Ferrer had never been previously recognized in his own right. “I pinch myself all the time,” Ibrahím said. “It is a dream come true. When I was younger I thought I was going to travel the world with my music. The only chance I got was when I came to Europe in 1962. Then there was the missile crisis. I played in Paris and Eastern Europe with Pacho Alonso’s orchestra and then I was stuck in Europe. I had to stay until everything settled down again before I could go home. Then nothing happened for thirty-five years. This has given me the will to live. I’m living the dream of my youth in the body of an old man.”

Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer / World Circuit WCD055. Composed by Arsenio Rodriguez.

Ruben Gonzalez: Melodia del Rio

Ruben Gonzalez was born at Santa Clara in April 1919. From boyhood he studied the piano at the town's Conservatoire, but did not carry on to become a concert pianist, being too fond of the indigenous rhythms of Cuba, particularly son. He was so good he moved to Havana in 1941. There he played with many of the leading dance orchestras of the day, including that of Mongo Santamaria. The early 1940s were an especially fertile period for music in Cuba (always the main laboratory for Latin dance) with American jazz and swing influences beginning to make themselves heard, and in 1943 Gonzalez joined the celebrated conjunto of the blind guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez. Later he played in Panama with Las Estrellas Negras, before returning to Havana to become a fixture in the city's cabarets, notably the open-air Tropicana.

Although he had made his recording debut in Havana in the 1940s, he did not cut his first solo album until Beuna Vista in 1996, when he was 78. Gonzalez had initially been nervous about the project, having notionally retired some years earlier and having since been handicapped by the onset of arthritis and the lack of a piano at home - it had been eaten by termites. But when the crew arrived early each morning at the studio, they found Gonzalez eagerly waiting to get inside and start playing. He could hardly bear to be parted from the piano, and when the session was officially finished he was invited to record his own album. The attention was not unwelcome. "I think people had forgotten about me in Cuba. Even my friends," Gonzalez said. "They knew I had finished working and then suddenly they find that I am more successful than at any time in my life. They are a little surprised. So am I."

He helped pioneer two of the most popular dances of the 20th Century, the mambo and the cha-cha-cha; the guitarist Ry Cooder called him "the greatest piano soloist I have ever heard", defining his style as a "Cuban cross between Thelonious Monk and Felix the Cat".

Introducing...Ruben Gonzalez / World Circuit WCD049. Composed by Ruben Gonzalez.

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