Ry Cooder
The American guitarist and producer who assembled the Buena Vista Social Club — Ry Cooder's 1996 trip to Havana resulted in one of the most celebrated world music recordings ever made and brought a generation of forgotten Cuban masters back to global attention.
About
Ry Cooder is an American guitarist and musicologist known throughout his career for exploring and documenting musical traditions from around the world — Hawaiian, West African, Tex-Mex, and others. He had worked with Cuban musicians before, and in 1996 traveled to Havana with the intention of documenting Cuban son traditions.
What he found was a group of veteran musicians — Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González, Omara Portuondo, and others — who were extraordinary artists largely forgotten in Cuba and unknown to the outside world. The recordings he produced, released as the Buena Vista Social Club album in 1997, became a global phenomenon. The album and Wim Wenders' documentary brought these musicians international careers in the final decades of their lives and sparked a worldwide interest in traditional Cuban music.
Rumba is the most African-rooted of all Cuban music and dance forms — born in the streets, courtyards, and docks of Havana and matanzas"> Matanzas in the late 19th century, with no European instruments, no salon setting, and no pretense of European propriety.
Lees meer >Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the birthplace of some of the world's most influential music and dance traditions. African, Spanish, and French cultural streams collided here over centuries of colonial history, producing an extraordinary creative culture that exported itself across the globe.
Lees meer >The Casa de la Trova in santiago de cuba"> Santiago de Cuba is the spiritual home of Cuban traditional music — Son, Bolero, Changüí, and Trova. Founded in 1968 on Calle Heredia in the heart of Santiago's historic center, it has been the gathering place for the city's musicians for over half a century.
Lees meer >The Buena Vista Social Club was originally a members' club in Havana's Buena Vista neighborhood, active in the 1940s and 50s as a gathering place for musicians playing Son, Danzón, Bolero, and Guaracha. It closed after the Revolution but was immortalized in 1997 when Ry Cooder brought together a group of surviving veteran musicians to record an album under the same name.
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