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Justified
and Ancient: Ibrahim Ferrer's solo disc showcases skills
honed for 72 years.
The
Cooder-produced Buena Vista Social Club album has
sold over 500,000 copies in the United States alone. The
album has made stars out of Ibrahim Ferrer, pianist Rubén
González and irascible guitarist Compay Segundo.
About
1,500 Cubans fled to the United States this year. Current
policy provides asylum for refugees who make it to shore
but requires that the Coast Guard repatriate those intercepted
at sea.
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Near the end of Buena Vista Social Club, director Wim
Wenders' sterling Cuban-music documentary, the camera rolls
through Havana. A panorama of the city reveals a phantom landscape
of crumbling Spanish stone sliding into the sea. Classic American
cars--archaic wrecks and styled-out sedans from the '40s and
'50s--cruise by in a time-warp procession that could give
a stateside auto geek an aneurysm.
It's a strange, seething place, and Buena Vista, which
follows up a 1997 album of the same name, provides an amazing
glimpse at this nether world. Serendipitously, Nonesuch
Records has released a trio of Cuban discs--one new gem
and two rediscovered classics--in the last few months. This
flurry hints at the richness of Cuba's musical stew of Latin
spice, African exuberance and classic Yankee pop sweetness.
Singer Ibrahim Ferrer's freshly recorded solo showcase
is the most bracing of the small clutch of discs. On his
self-titled album, Ferrer, who had ditched singing in favor
of the more lucrative shoe-shine business until he appeared
in Buena Vista, reveals himself as one of the world's
greatest crooners. A sensuous band based around the Buena
Vista ensemble backs Ferrer's ornate songs, stirring
up a sound made for romance. Vine-ripened at age 72, Ferrer
just may be the suavest man in the world, a mature artist
who evokes slow-cooked Old World elemental passion and billowing
cigar smoke.
The Wenders documentary shows that Ferrer is full-up in
the personality department as well. The unmitigated joy
that flashes on his rumpled face when he hits New York City
for the first time in the film's climactic minutes provides
Wenders with an unscriptable tear-jerking finale.
Nearly 20 years before Cooder did the world a favor by
aligning Buena Vista's constellation of talent, Cuba's
government-run recording company embarked on a similar project.
Frustrated that the U.S. embargo left a vast market open
to musicians from other Latin American countries who were
copping Cuban sounds and selling them as salsa, the state's
Areito label put together an all-star band for a few sessions
in 1979. Estrellas de Areito may not have secured Latin-music
hegemony for Cuba, but Nonesuch's re-release of their double
disc, Los Heroes, proves that the larger artistic
mission was accomplished. With a huge ensemble (more than
30 musicians), Los Heroes lacks the sharp focus of
Buena Vista Social Club and the Ferrer album, but
it makes a uniquely ebullient background spin. Highlighted
by a 15-minute take on the classic "Guajira Guántanamera,"
the Areito showcase is high-octane party noise.
Nonesuch went even deeper into the archives of Cuba's commie-monopoly
record industry to dig out Bossa Cubana by Los Zafiros,
a late-'50s to early-'60s vocal quintet that came up with
its own version of rock 'n' roll on the wrong side of the
Iron Curtain. Inspired by American doo-wop groups like the
Platters and popular South American dance music, Los Zafiros
strung together sweet harmonies and jazzed-up beats. They
also fell into the patented spiral of grueling tours, violent
personality conflicts and booze-fuelled mayhem, culminating
in the break-up of the group and the early deaths of most
of its members. This familiar, archetypal, descent only
makes Los Zafiros' dulcet teen-dream sound more eerie. They
were rock stars trapped in a parallel universe of pop, hitting
the big time in Moscow, Minsk and Warsaw while the West
trained missiles on their homeland.
As Wenders' documentary shows, Havana hardly looks like
a realized Communist utopia. Rather, the raucous metropolis
presents an alternate ending for the 20th century, a photo
negative of mainstream America's glossy cyber-capitalism.
Fidel has failed to export revolution. But Buena Vista
and the priceless Nonesuch discs suggest that, with the
37-year-old embargo showing cracks and political discontent
percolating beneath Castro's evergreen rule, America could
soon face a genuine Cuban invasion. As Red Scare politicians
loved to point out, the island is only 90 miles offshore--well
within striking distance.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
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