Ry Cooder – Buena Vista Social Club (Tape) (w/ 12 Page Booklet)

A meeting takes a new direction

A planned collaboration between Malian and Cuban musicians brought the project to Havana in March 1996. When the musicians from Mali did not arrive, the sessions took a different course. Buena Vista Social Club grew from a gathering of Cuban performers across generations, introducing their repertoire to a new international audience in 1997.

Ry Cooder produced, Nick Gold helped initiate the project, and Juan de Marcos González connected the musicians. Jerry Boys recorded the sessions at EGREM in Havana. The Cuban singers and instrumentalists are the centre of the album, each bringing an individual musical history.

Ibrahim Ferrer and the shape of a song

“Chan Chan” opens the record, but the programme soon moves among different voices and forms. Ibrahim Ferrer is one of its defining singers, while Omara Portuondo appears on “Veinte Años”. Compay Segundo and Eliades Ochoa bring further personalities into the sequence.

Notice how a change of singer alters the relationship with the accompaniment. An entrance does not need additional volume to attract attention. A different way of shaping a line can reorganise the listener’s sense of the ensemble.

Rubén González at the piano

Rubén González supplies a melodic voice of his own around the vocal performances. Orlando “Cachaíto” López’s double bass and the percussion offer other threads through the programme. “Pueblo Nuevo” is a useful starting point for placing the piano at the centre of a listen.

Many basic performances were recorded with the musicians playing together, while additions and subsequent work also took place outside Cuba. The finished album is both a meeting in a room and a studio production. Both aspects belong to its history.

Two reels, a different playback system

RRAP 0040 is the Ultra Tape edition: two 10.5-inch reels of quarter-inch tape, stereo half-track at 15 ips, with IEC/CCIR equalisation. Playback requires a suitably equipped tape machine; NAB here describes the reel hub, not the equalisation. The fourteen tracks span two reels, accompanied by a twelve-page booklet. The publisher specifies real-time duplication at Blue Heaven Studios but gives conflicting descriptions of the source used. No uninterrupted all-analog production chain is promised, and specifications for the separate vinyl box do not apply to this tape edition.

You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and dispatch from Hilden. Editions not currently in stock are dispatched after the goods arrive.

Also in another edition: Buena Vista Social Club

More by Ry Cooder: Chicken Skin Music · Paradise And Lunch

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Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.