Buena Vista Social Club / Ry Cooder/Ruben Ganzalez -Buena Vista Social Club ( 25th anni bonus trac ( 2LP )k )

Release date:26-01-2021 (originally released in 1997)

2021 EU reissue 180g vinyl 2LP + 5 bonus tracks - 1997 Grammy Award Winner Produced by Ry Cooder-These featured musicians are joined by a host of Cuba’s finest players, including Orlando "Cachaíto" López on bass, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal on trumpet, and the percussio;

Tracks: (2LP's)

The original idea behind Buena Vista was to record a collaboration between a number of African and Cuban guitarists. World Circuit’s Nick Gold invited Ry Cooder to participate, having worked together before on Ali Farka Touré’s 1994 Grammy Award–winning Talking Timbuktu. 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. 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 and 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 performances were recorded "live" in one or two takes.

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.” Featured on vocals is 70-year-old 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 great bolero singer Omara Portuondo, whom Cooder calls “the Edith Piaf of Cuba.” Omara happened to be in the studio lobby and Cooder invited her upstairs to record. 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. 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.”

These featured musicians are joined by a host of Cuba’s finest players, including Orlando "Cachaíto" López on bass, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal on trumpet, and the percussionists from the band Sierra Maestra. The album includes a wide 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 contemporary composition by Compay Segundo.

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Buena Vista Social Club is a studio album by Cuban bandleader and musician Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder with traditional Cuban musicians, released on September 16, 1997 on World Circuit Records. The album was produced by Cooder who travelled to Cuba to record sessions with the musicians, many of whom were previously largely unknown outside Cuba. The musicians and the songs were later also featured in a documentary film of the same name.

The music featured on the album was inspired by the Buena Vista Social Club, a membership club that was at its height during the 1940s and 1950s. Many of the musicians performing on the record were either former performers at the club or were prominent Cuban musicians during the era of the club's existence. Other younger musicians on the record trace their musical roots back to pre-revolutionary Cuban music, mainly the famous Havana musical scene of the 1950s.

Buena Vista Social Club earned considerable critical praise and has received numerous accolades from music writers and publications. In 2003, the album was ranked number 260 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, one of only two albums on the list to be produced in a non-English speaking country.