0353. Buena Vista Social Club
Buena Vista Social Club

You know what? Ry Cooder's back again! This time it's three years later and Cuba instead of Mali and with a host of soon-to-be stars.
The name Buena Vista Social Club references a night club in Havana where some of the musicians appearing on this album played back in its heyday in the forties. As you might guess, it's not the spring chickens of the lot we can hear here, some forty-five to fifty years later, but they perform pretty damn well!

Just one thing: even though the expertise should outshine it and it feels a bit wrong to say it, some of the tracks are actually a bit boring. I guess I'm not that instinctively into all the son [the genre, not the family status], but still - a couple of tracks really gets me going and most of the songs are enjoyable.
The first one for instance. Chan Chan is perhaps the one that became a sort of signature for the album, documentary as well as for the tours that followed and is a composition based on a dream (according to composer Compay Segundo) and an old labor song (that he'd heard as a child).
Buena Vista Social Club could easily function as a gateway drug into son-listening if you're so inclined.