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…is it just a random mesh of sight and sound, or does some-
thing really new emerge? T h i s gets another look in this issue
from Andrew Quint, who saw a performance in New York that
made him think the much-hyped phenomenon might be real.
And I, along with anyone else who’s seen the Wim Wen-
ders film Buena Vista Social Club, now better understand
something simpler, but still important: How an extra visual
dimension can help us understand music.
This is Wenders’ latest film, and its title ought to ring a
bell with people interested in Latin music, world music, or
just plain good music, thanks to the Nonesuch Records CD
also called Buena Vista Social Club. It’s a Ry Cooder project
(another of his explorations of cross-cultural musical
styles), recorded in Cuba and featuring older Cuban musi-
cians who hadn’t performed for quite a while. I’d had the CD
for some time, along with others spun off from it, including
something credited to the Afro-Cuban All-Stars (featuring
some of the same people), and a recent solo album spot-
lighting Ibrahim Ferrer, a Cuban singer with a tenderness,
sly wit, and radiant sense of rhythm that mark him, for me,
as an exceptional treasure.
Wenders’ movie might be called a high-class “making of,”
and it helped me understand something about the musical pro-
ject I hadn’t quite grasped. Ferrer apart, my first reaction to the
CDs was to think the music was nice, but a little sloppy and
informal, traits I normally don’t mind (I love rock & roll, and
how could I, if I didn’t like sloppy and informal?), but which
struck me here as odd, maybe because I thought Cuban music
should be hot and tight. Adding to my puzzlement was a recent
trip to Cuba, where I spent a week tracking down Cuban clas-
sical music for two articles I wrote for the Wall Street Journal,
and which appeared there in May. I t ’s not that I heard any of
the Buena Vista musicians (my loss), or even any musicians
like them (again my loss). But I got a shot of Cuba in my blood,
heard a lot of other Cuban things on CD, and even spoke to a
Cuban musicologist, who – maybe I took this out of context –
suggested that the Buena Vista recordings aren’t all that
remarkable to anyone who knows Cuban music well.
And then I saw the Wenders film. I’ll tease Wenders
about one exaggeration, harmless but misleading – his many
shots of old American cars. These, it’s true, are a famous
sight in Cuba, especially Havana, and for good reason. When
the Castro revolution hit in 1959, Cuba was economically
and politically close to the United States (it was virtually an
American colony, with Havana essentially controlled by the
Mafia). American cars were naturally what people drove.
When the US broke relations with the Castro government,
American car imports stopped, and Cubans for a while had
neither money nor the chance to buy anything else. They
kept driving their old Chevys and Oldsmobiles, and still
drive them, holding them together with spit and ingenuity.
These ancient vehicles are a famous sight on just about
any Havana street. But they’re not the most common sight.
Most cars in Havana are creaky Russian ones, boxy and can-
tankerous, imported during the years when
the Soviet Union was Cuba’s ally. They’re no
fun to look at, and Wenders simply left them out, a pardon-
able decision cinematographically, but not an accurate pic-
ture of what he surely saw.
But the wonder of the Buena Vista film, apart from the
sheer delight of watching it, is how it changed my hearing of
the music. (I should note that it’s shot in grainy video, but
since Wenders is an artist, the grainy video becomes an
artistic element. It helps convey the otherworldliness of
Havana, a city literally crumbling, but jumping with life. The
colors are intentionally distorted, too, for an extra distanc-
ing effect.) I knew, for instance, that the musicians weren’t
young. But to see them – genial old coots in their seventies,
eighties, and even nineties – makes them come alive.
We hear them tell their stories, too, and we realize some-
thing else. These aren’t just musicians. They’re top entertainers
from another time, who know their business cold, even if they
h a v e n ’ t practiced it in quite a while. So for them, the B u e n a
Vista Social Club recording isn’t just a job. It’s recognition.
Even more, it’s a kind of unexpected personal gravy. Never did
they think they’d play again, least of all with international atten-
tion. But they’re prepared. The old shticks – pianist Rubén
González plays a solo moving up the keyboard, and when he
passes the highest note, keeps on playing in the air – work just
as well in Carnegie Hall as they did in old Havana nightclubs.
A trip to New York for a Carnegie performance is the cli-
max of the film, and for the musicians, we sense, the climax
of their careers. “Que linda, linda, linda, linda!” cries one of
them, walking up Broadway. “How gorgeous, gorgeous, gor-
geous, gorgeous!” They all go to the observation deck near
the top of the Empire State Building, and here – with Wen-
ders scoring a coup for both delight and honesty, by filming
his stars exactly as they are – we see them searching for the
Statue of Liberty, even though none of them knows where it
is or what it looks like, not even the one who swears he vis-
ited it, many, many years ago.
Of course I wanted to love their music. And I learned to
hear it differently. What was sloppy once (though I should
stress that not all of it is), is now adorable, in the spirit of the
search for the Statue. What was lively gets promoted to
completely irresistible, and what’s most important, most of
the players and the singers gain individual voices. They had
them all along, of course, but once I saw the movie, their
individuality was magnified. “That’s the one who prays to
Santeria gods…those are the guys who can’t stop playing
dominoes…he’s the one who’s 90, and can’t stop grinning.
He says he’s working on his sixth child!”
Not that all of this, in some metaphysical subliminal
form, wasn’t in the music anyway (and of course was part of
the reason so many people hear these CDs with such
delight). But the movie brought it out for me in implicit
stereo, 3D, surround, and holographic hypertrue reality.
Go see the movie if it’s playing at an art house near you.
And get the CDs, all on Nonesuch: Buena Vista Social Club,
Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer, and “A
Toda Cuba le Gusta,” credited to the Afro-
Cuban All-Stars.
G R E G S A N D O W
The Vexed Question of Multimedia…
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M U S I C & M U L T I M E D I A