Buena Vista Social Club
In keeping with my stated course goal to learn more about Cuban culture and the influences on its development, I chose to focus my project on the 1998 documentary Buena Vista Social Club. While this film primarily focuses on the bringing together of a group of mostly aging and forgotten artists to produce an album reflective of a bygone musical era in Cuba, there are several identifiable underlying issues that reveal a variety of ways in which political events and social issues have played a role in the isolation of these artists. Indeed, the film points out that many of these once famous musicians were living in relative obscurity some 40 years after the Castro led Cuban Revolution. Many were well into their eighties and nineties when the film was made. Singer Ibrahim Ferrer was shining shoes and selling lottery tickets to support his family. Others had long stopped performing their craft in order to be able to continue to support their families. What follows is my analysis of how this film has given me valuable insight into not only the demise of these special musicians, but also how that demise is a mere representation a larger issue of change in Cuban culture since the 1950’s.
In order to understand the demise of the Buena Vista Social Club (and all social clubs in general) post-Revolution, I think it is important to understand the club’s significance in Cuban culture during the early twentieth century. According to Gross (2008), in Cuba prior to the revolution social clubs (known in Spanish as sociedades de color) were gathering places where blacks and poor, uneducated whites could come together to enjoy shared interests. In so much as these groups were marginalized in society, the clubs provided ...
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...at the world can benefit from the many unique facets of this “rich” culture.
Works Cited
Buena Vista Social Club. Dir. Wim Wenders. Prod. Ry Cooder. Arte, Road Movies Filmproduktion, Kintop Pictures, Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC), Channel Four Films. 1998.
Chasteen, J.C. (2006). Born in blood & fire. (2nd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Danzon. History of Popular Cuban Music: The Cuban Son. 16 Aug. 2009
< http://www.danzon.com/eng/history/cuban-music.htm >
Gross, Liza. “Race-based clubs see revival in Cuba.” The Miami Herald. 29 Dec. 2008. 16 Aug. 2009
Martinez, Rubén. “Buena Vista Social Club: the film.” Rev. of Buena Vista Social Club by Wim Wenders. PBS: date unknown. < http://www.pbs.org/buenavista/film/introduction.html >.
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...ert. Flesh and blood so cheap: the Triangle fire and its legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Print.
Montagne, Renee. “Latina Girls Festively Come of Age.” NPR Morning Edition 6 Aug. 2007: 1
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Danticat, Edward. “A Wall of Fire Rising”(2009). The Norton Introduction to Literature, Portable 10th ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J.Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. Pg.232-244
...re, Robin D, (2006) Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. University of California Press: New York
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