Cuban Music’s American Arrival
Cuban Music’s American Arrival: Sublime Illusion?
8.24 a.m. ET (1224
GMT) October 6, 1999
By Tracey Middlekauff
NEW YORK — It’s just minutes before the Eliades Ochoa performance at the Virgin Megastore in New York City. He’s here to promote his new release, Sublime Illusion, on the Higher Octave label.
The room is packed, and the crowd is mixed: young, old, very old, Asian, African-American, Latino, male, female. But people’s reasons for being here seem the same.
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“I saw Buena Vista Social Club a couple of weeks ago,” says Amy, a young blonde in her mid-20s. And Enrique, in his mid-30s, has also come to see Ochoa because of the film. He had never heard of Ochoa before, and says, “Who would’ve heard of him without Buena Vista? I love all of those musicians.”
Buena Vista Social Club, the Grammy-winning album of classic Cuban music produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder, has become more successful than anyone involved in the project ever imagined, selling over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone, an unheard-of number for so-called ”world music.”
No doubt the Wim Wenders documentary of the same name helped spark interest in the music and the musicians; soloists from the Club, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzáles, Compay Segundo, and of course, Eliades Ochoa, have received recognition and solo careers in the wake of the music and film’s success.
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Many people walk away from the film with the idea that these Cuban musicians were rescued from obscurity by Cooder. While this may be partly true in certain instances—Ibrahim Ferrer had reportedly given up singing and was shining shoes before his work on Buena Vista—other
musicians in the collaboration had full and rewarding careers before they ever met Ry Cooder. Eliades Ochoa, a respected vocalist and critically acclaimed musician (Ochoa plays a cross between the tres, a stringed instrument, and the guitar) is one of those.
Elijah Wald, a freelance writer who covers world music for the Boston
Globe, explains, “Eliades was a street player in Cuba. After the revolution, the government got interested in Cuban culture. Eliades got his own radio show as an example of Santiago style.” In 1978, Ochoa was chosen to take over the the Cuarteto Patria, a 60-year-old ensemble.
If Buena Vista fans are surprised that Ochoa was not in fact rescued from obscurity, they would probably be even more shocked to learn that most Cubans don’t even listen to the traditional music featured on the album.
Wald says, “This has been marketed to a white audience—that’s true by definition. To Latin music, this is archaic. Some people are probably charmed this music is back.” But, he points out, marketing Buena Vista to a Latino audience would mean getting airplay on Latin stations, and there’s “not a prayer” that would happen.
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And Ned Sublette, who owns QbaDisc, a contemporary Cuban music label, says, “This music (Buena Vista) is not about what’s happening now.”
In fact, Wald says Ochoa’s music is “the most countrified of country.”
None of this is to imply that the praise heaped on the Buena Vista musicians isn’t richly deserved. But one problem, Wald says, is that the attention has not shifted “one inch outside of Buena Vista. There are other great musicians of that generation.”
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a music writer for the L.A. Times, cites the story of Cachao, the father of mambo, as an example of the way the romance of Buena Vista has not extended to other Cuban musicians.
“Buena Vista Social Club is not the first documentary about Cuban musicians,” she explains. A documentary was made about Cachao, but was virtually unnoticed by the media. Valdes-Rodriguez believes this is because Cachao was a forgotten musician who lived in Miami, not Cuba. “It’s not
as much of a romance because he was forgotten by the U.S.,” she says.
Indeed, there are elements of the Buena Vista film Valdes-Rodriguez finds troubling and “patronizing”. Often she feels the musicians are portrayed as naive, when in fact many of them, including Eliades Ochoa, have toured extensively in Europe and are well-traveled citizens of the world. Elijah Wald calls Compay Segundo, one of the Club members, “one of the most sophisticated men on earth.”
Valdes-Rodriguez suspects part of the appeal for an Anglo audience, on a subconscious level, is that “The antique musicians hearken back to a time when other minorities were charming entertainers.”
And what if this is just a fad? Will fickle U.S. audiences forget the Cuban musicians as quickly as they snatched up their CDs?
“If you had asked me (if this was a fad) when it first hit, I would have said yes,” Wald says. “But this time around, Buena Vista Social Club is touring without Ry Cooder, and they’ve (still) sold out huge crowds.”
And Jeff Turton, a jazz deejay in Boston, says that an upcoming Buena Vista concert sold out “as fast as a rock show.”
Itsia Balboa, a writer at People en Espanol, believes the so-called Cuban sensation, whoever it is marketed for, is “not a fad. It’s the best music in America. One of the best in the world.”
And judging by the crowd’s reaction at the Eliades Ochoa performance in the Virgin store, a whole lot of people would agree with that statement.
Balboa believes, “It’s not merchandise. It’s very good music.”
