Buena Vista Social Club Analysis

This essay will discuss and analyse how far the album Buena Vista Social Club can be considered a great work, paying particular attention to the music on the album, the recording process and the impact it had on the country of Cuba and the Cuban public.

Before the album was released, in 1989 the president of Cuba at the time Fidel Castro declared The Special Period which was a euphemism for the economic crisis that was happening at Cuba at the time. The Special Period was declared mainly because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the height of the economic depression was in the early to mid 90’s which then started to decline towards the end of the 90’s. One of the most popular music of the time was Timba Music a genre which mixes

The club was closed in the 1940’s. Nick Gold himself was extremely interested and was a fan of artists and groups such as Arsenio Rodriguez, Guillermo Portabales, Abelardo Barroso and plenty of more folk music from the late 40’s and 50’s.

The album was recorded in 1996 in the space of just six days and consists 14 songs mostly of re-recordings of traditional songs from previous years. So it may be suggested that the group of Buena Vista Social Club was a revival group “Buena Vista was very much a revival group, It’s repertoire was basically from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Nearly all of the album was made up of famous songs that people had performed or recorded previously" The album was finally released in September 1997 and eventually managed to sell 8 million copies, the album still sells well to this

The songs on the album are truly great, and the musicians who appear on the album are evidently extremely talented. You could argue that this release is simply just another cover album since most of the songs on the record are covers of traditional Cuban songs which were performed and recorded plenty of years before the release of the album The record sales did help Cuba in time of economic crisis as the country became a much more popular tourist destination. You could argue that Ry Cooder and Nick Gold really helped the great musicians such as Ibrahim Ferrer and Ruben Gonzalez saving the two from retirement also helping the artists release solo albums which was also released on the World Circuit label and making them become household names and famous around the world. So BVSC could be considered a great work from a Western point of view, but from a Cuban point of view is BVSC really a great work? The popularity of the album in Cuba is completely different to the popularity of the album in countries such as United States and it may be suggested that the album has had little impact on Cuban audiences “The Buena Vista Social Club has not affected me. I haven’t benefited from it. In Cuba nobody cares. In Cuba, they say, what? They got a prize? Huh! Good for them! And that’s it” Although the album helped musicians for it to be a great work, it needs to be considered great globally rather than certain parts of the