Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club: Compay Segundo (vocals, guitar, congas); Eliades Ochoa (vocals, guitar); Ibrahim Ferrer (vocals, bongos, clave); Ry Cooder (acoustic & electric slide guitars, guitar, oud, bolon, mbira, percussion); Ruben Gonzalez (piano). Additional personnel includes: Juan de Marcos Gonzalez (conductor, guiro, background vocals); Julio Alberto Fernandez (vocals, maracas); Manuel "Puntillita" Licea (vocals, congas); Omara Portuondo (vocals); Benito Suarez Magana (guitar); Barbarito Torres (laoud); Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal (trumpet); Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez, Salvador Repilado Labrada (bass); Joachim Cooder (drums, udu drum, dumbeck, conga); Alberto "Virgillo" Valdes (maracas, background vocals). Recorded at Egrem Studios, Havana, Cuba, March, 1996. Includes liner notes by Nick Gold and Nigel Williamson. BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance. That Ry Cooder, you've got to keep an eye on him every minute, or he jumps into another cross-cultural collaboration. In the wake of his landmark recordings TALKING TIMBUKTU with Ali Farka Toure and A MEETING BY THE RIVER with V.M. Bhatt comes BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, essentially a supergroup of traditional Cuban musicians with the addition of international agitator Cooder. Somehow, Cooder always finds just the right space to slide in with his sinuous slide guitar, so that it works in almost any context. Here, amidst the multi-layered percussion, piano, and Cuban guitar rhythms, Cooder's slide simultaneously finds a home and spurs the ensemble on. The natural beauty of the Cuban tonal and rhythmic palette is the real star of BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, evoking both a sense of mystery and a feeling of intense emotional satisfaction.