Omara: Cuba's Legendary Diva documentary screens on PBS, Friday

Omara – a long-overdue documentary on Buena Vista Social Club singer Omara Portuondo airs on PBS tonight at 10 pm Eastern.

Buena Vista Social Club's Eliades Ochoa @ Koerner Hall, May 10

Don't miss this rare chance to see Buena Vista Social Club keyman Eliades Ochoa in Toronto on Saturday. Get tickets below. 

Eliades Ochoa – Cuba's Man In Black

Eliades Ochoa was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 22, 1946, in Songo la Maya, Santiago de Cuba. Eliades is considered one of the most renowned Cuban “soneros” of all time, a notable defender of traditional Cuban music, and the best guitarist of his generation. His distinctive cowboy hat and his penchant for wearing black have led some to call him “The Cuban Johnny Cash.”

From a very young age, he began to play the guitar with his parents of peasant origin as teachers and in a self-taught way. He alternated with itinerant troubadours from a very young age. In his walks through “guateques,” bars, and “zonas de tolerancia,” he began to learn the vast traditional repertoire of Cuban music, of which he is a teacher today. His musical style is due to his place of origin, the Cuban countryside, the anecdotes he listened to, the “guateques campesinos,” and a series of other elements that marked him and made him the artist he is today.

Eliades joined the Septeto Típico Oriental in 1969 and officially entered the Casa de la Trova in 1970, where he began to perform regularly. In 1982 he became part of the Cuarteto Patria as director, arranger, voice, and lead guitar. He assimilated the repertoire of Patria with his own style, keeping alive the tradition of Cuban folk music since 1940. He demonstrated his introspective capacity, and on a formal level, the expressive resources he had, served him as a hook to show his love for Cuban music. His style as a guitarist gave a new hallmark to the group.

Also, in the 80s, he participated with Compay Segundo and the Cuarteto Patria in various artistic tours, and with him, he recorded the first version of “Chan Chan.” The way Eliades was inspired to create the lead guitar chords for this iconic song has remained a hallmark that inspires troubadours and listeners. Eliades is one of the stars and founders of Buena Vista Social Club; with this album, he won his first Grammy as Best Tropical Latin Performance in 1997. In 1998, Eliades collaborated with Manu Dibango on the album CubAfrica. Between 1999 and 2000, he was nominated for a Grammy under Best Tropical Latin and nominated for an Oscar with the documentary of Buena Vista Social Club.

Among his most notorious albums with Virgin Records, we can highlight “Sublime Ilusión” with the production of John Wooler and the special participation of Charlie Musselwhite, David Hidalgo from Los Lobos and Ry Cooder himself. This album takes a turn for Eliades’ career by being released worldwide and performing live in the United States and Europe, filling rooms and theaters. “Sublime Ilusión” was nominated for a Grammys as “Best Traditional Tropical and Latin Album.” “Tributo al Cuarteto Patria” is an album that recognizes Pancho Cobas, founder of Cuartero Patia, and the troubadours and composers who have inspired Eliades Ochoa’s career. With this album, Eliades was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Traditional Tropical and Latin Performance.”

In 2010 he recorded the album “Afrocubism” accompanied by his group Patria and important musicians from Mali. This project gave way to the Buena Vista Social Club. National Geographic recognized this album as the best album of the world that year, and in 2012 it was nominated for an American Grammy. In 2012, he released the album “Un Bolero Para Ti,” where he delights his audience with sublime melodies. This album won four Latin Grammy Awards.

He has collaborated in the record productions of Enrique Bumbury, Luis Eduardo Aute, Manu Dibango, Jarabe de Palo, Blof Umoja, Charlie Musselwhite, Moncho, Armando Manzanero, Descemer Bueno, Pablo Milanés, among others. In 2013 he was selected to participate in a tribute to Bob Dylan.”

In December 2018, Eliades Ochoa from Cuba to the World was released, a documentary about Eliades Ochoa’s artistic career directed and produced by Cynthia Biestek. This documentary has been awarded multiple times and presented at major film festivals worldwide.

Eliades Ochoa continues creating and composing music. In 2020 he delighted us with the musical production “Vamos a Bailar un Son” and in this year 2021, with a new collaboration with C Tangana “Muriendo de Envidia” that appears on the album “El Madrileño.” In 2023, Eliades released the "Guajiro" album, a special European tour edition of his “Vamos a Bailar un Son” album which features Eliades’ interpretations of songs by important Latin American composers like Ñico Saquito and Agustín Lara and includes a collaboration with Pablo Milanés. The updated edition includes three previously unheard bonus tracks, two composed by Eliades himself. 

Get tickets for Eliades Ochoa's Toronto show at Koerner Hall on Saturday (May 10) at 8 pm right here. Watch a few performance clips followed by a Spanish language documentary below. 

R.I.P. Buena Vista SC trumpeter Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, 1933-2024

Sadly, Buena Vista Social Club trumpeter Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, who also played with Orquesta Riverside, has passed away. 

You can listen to Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal's long-overdue debut album for World Circuit from 2004 right here. 

Remembering pianist Rubén González on his birthday

Here's Rubén González performing Ernesto Leucona's Afro-Cuban standard "Siboney" with Buena Vista Social Club. 

Rare Buena Vista Social Club session footage from 1996 released

The in-studio footage shot by Susan Titelman shows the crucial Buena Vista role played by Barbarito Torres and Eliades Ochoa. 

Here's the scoop...

As part of Buena Vista Social Club's 25th anniversary celebrations, which includes the release of special editions of the 1996 recording – comprising remastered 2LP + 2CD Deluxe Book Pack, 2CD Casebook, and digital formats which contain the original recording plus unheard tracks – World Circuit is also sharing some accompanying videos. This new clip for "El Cuarto De Tula" features footage of the legendary 1996 Havana recording sessions, captured by Susan Titelman. This footage notably showcases celebrated laud player Barbarito Torres’ one-take solo from the album, note for note, in real time.

Pre-order a copy of the 25th Anniversary edition of Buena Vista Social Club's debut album right here. Watch the video below.

 

Listen to Ibrahim Ferrer sing "Ven Conmigo Guajira" & "Ojos Malvados"

"Ven Conmigo Guajira" & "Ojos Malvados" appear on the World Circuit's super-sized reissue of Ibrahim's Buenos Hermanos out February 28th.

Buena Vista's Eliades Ochoa joins sister Maria Ochoa for Guajira + Mas Guajira

For the latest album from Buena Vista Social Club keyman Eliades Ochoa, the Santiago de Cuba-born master of the tres and cuatro has teamed up with his sister and long-time collaborator Maria Ochoa for Guajira + Mas Guajira (Tumi Music) – an exploration of their shared musical heritage with the support of Cuban band Alma Latina. A two-year labor of love, the album chronicles Ochoa’s lifelong fascination with guajira music, Cuba's answer to country.

Far from an academic exercise or some misguided nostalgia trip, the former Cuarteto Patria mainman puts his own spin on guajira, borrowing freely from Afro-Latin styles to enrich his repertoire, with the ease of a seasoned veteran who understands the tradition from the ground up. Elegant guitar and string work combine with the Ochoas’ gritty, endearing vocals, with bluesy blasts of electric guitar, Caribbean hints, and the pulse of Latin percussion.

“Together with Buena Vista Social Club, this album is one the most important and interesting recordings of my life,” says Eliades Ochoa. “Alma Latina is an inspiration and an expression of art, music, painting and dance. It is a call to bring harmony and love through music to all human beings and Latin brothers. And it’s about the dance,” an element that runs through every charming track on the album.


Maria Ochoa remembers sitting with her brother as a young girl. He would play some tunes on his battered guitar, and she would swing in the hammock and sing. They both grew up surrounded by song and tres playing, thanks to their musical family, farmers in a small town in Cuba’s mountainous, rural east. They grew up steeped in Cuba’s country sounds and both grew into riveting performers.

From those halcyon early days, Eliades began to rethink tradition and, with time, to make a name for himself. He added strings to the tres, developing his own playing style. In the 60s, Ochoa got a standing gig playing for the Santiago de Cuba radio station, with its rural audience. He started his own groups and won a coveted spot at the Casa de Trova. Eventually, the venerable Cuban musical institution, Cuarteto Patria, asked Ochoa to join.

Ochoa has never bothered to do what was expected of him, however. Instead of simply agreeing, he insisted he should lead the ensemble. And though he specialized in the rustic, bittersweet sounds of the countryside, Ochoa began to weave more cosmopolitan sounds into the group’s work, adding a touch of tango and bursts of brass, as well as encouraging his new band to incorporate trova and son into their performances.

The dialogue with his sister, one of his first musical collaborators, has a winning naturalness, a warmth that invites the listener in. Maria is a formidable Latin music force in her own right. She often played with her brother during his early Santiago days, but really came into her own in the late 80s, playing with Rubén González, Gloria America, Mario Patterson, Sonera Edition, Tierra Caliente Caribe Typical, Los Kinis and The Achala Group. She began touring the world with other Cuban heavyweights, including Buena Vista alums Omara Portuondo, Ibrahim Ferrer, and her brother Eliades, when not cutting her own albums. Last year, she joined Alma Latina, directed by rising star Julio Montoro.

Together, the sibling team and Alma Latina touch on the melancholic yearning of rustic Cuban sounds, then hit hard with upbeat irresistible Latin dance numbers. It’s a celebratory collection of performances lovers of Buena Vista will instantly fall for. Many music fans outside the Latin world may not know they love guajira, the style that animates the album, but chances are they already do. From “Guantanamera” to the Wailers’ unexpected ska take on the style, the music has infiltrated global pop.

“Cuban music has a certain feel, that sway, that harmony,” reflects Eliades. “It can get right to the heart and the soul, no matter who you are.”

Previously unissued Buena Vista Social Club recordings due March 23

Buena Vista Social Club "Lost and Found" (World Circuit)

Almost two decades after the release of the original, Grammy winning album, the romance of the Buena Vista Social Club continues with Lost and Found, a collection of previously unreleased tracks, some recorded at the first legendary sessions in Havana and others during the extraordinarily rich outpouring of music that followed.

The original Buena Vista Social Club album was recorded for World Circuit Records over seven days in Havana in 1996, bringing together many of the great names of the golden age of Cuban music in the 1950s, several of whom were coaxed out of retirement for the sessions by Eliades Ochoa and Juan de Marcos Gonzalez. The album became a surprise international best-seller and the most successful album in the history of Cuban music.

At the time, nobody had any idea that the record was merely the start of a musical phenomenon. In the years that followed the Buena Vista veterans toured the world to ecstatic audiences and were the subject of a celebrated feature film directed by Wim Wenders. Further acclaimed recordings followed, including solo releases by the singers Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, virtuoso pianist Rubén González and bassist Cachaíto López and a celebratory live album recorded at a triumphant concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Buena Vista Social Club had become a household name. A core band featuring several of the original musicians continue to sell out shows world-wide as Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club. They embark on their farewell ‘Adios’ tour in 2015.

"Over the years we were often asked what unreleased material was left in the vaults,” says World Circuit’s Nick Gold. “We knew of some gems, favourites amongst the musicians, but we were always too busy working on the next project to go back and see what else we had. When we eventually found the time, we were astonished at how much wonderful music there was.”

All the studio tracks were recorded for World Circuit at the Egrem studio in Havana during the rich and prolific period of creativity that followed the recording of the original album and stretched into the early 2000s. Spiced with live recordings from the same fertile period, there’s a tremendous and sometimes surprising variety to the material heard on Lost and Found. But there is a unifying thread built around a core collective of legendary musicians expressing an esprit de corps which everyone who was ever enchanted by Buena Vista Social Club will recognize and enjoy.

Buena Vista Songhai Club

Although it wasn't widely reported at the time of Buena Vista Social Club's phenomenal success, the original concept that Ry Cooder and World Circuit founder Nick Gold had for the Havana recording was supposed to be an Africa-meets-Cuba cultural collision putting Malian guitar shaman Ali Farka Toure in the company of old-school Cuban son musicians.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the famed Egrem Studio – Ali Farka Toure missed his flight from Bamako for reasons which remain unclear to this day. Some say that as spiritual leader of his Niafunke village, he had to remain at home because of the looming threat of civil war spilling over into the region while others claim that Toure simply decided instead to accept a lucrative request to perform at a ceremonial function for one of his wealthy patrons. There's also a completely different narrative involving some mysterious visa mix-up but in any case, Toure was a no-show in Cuba.
With studio time already booked at Egrem, Cooder and Gold needed to come up with a back-up plan on the double which meant rooting around Havana for surviving stars of Cuba's pre-Castro golden era who still had their chops. Fortunately the flame keeper of Cuban son, Eliades Ochoa, had already tracked down the great Compay Segundo 10 years earlier and was regularly showcasing the cigar-puffing octogenarian in his Cuarteto Patria shows where his crowd-pleasing tune Chan Chan was a surefire showstopper. Right there, in Chan Chan's gently rolling Afro-Caribbean syncopation, you've got Buena Vista Social Club's sonic blueprint. While Cooder happily accepted the Buena Vista glory, the bit about the scrapped initial plan involving Toure was largely overlooked by the media much like the crucial role played by Ochoa in salvaging the project.

Now 13 years after the release of the Grammy winning Buena Vista Social Club album, it's payback time for Ocho and his Cuarteto Patria crew in the form of AfroCubism. Revisiting the Africa-meets-Cuba concept that had to be ditched earlier, Gold built the AfroCubism project upon the solid son foundation of Ochoa's group Cuarteto Patria with Malian superstars  Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyate and Rail Band guitar dazzler Djelimady Tounkara trading licks with the tres slinging Ochoa who shares vocal duties with veteran Las Maravillas de Mali singer Kassy Mady. It's a world music dream team like none other ever assembled. Imagine if LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Kevin Garnett all joined Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers and you'll get some idea of the dimensions of this thing.
Considering the serious string-bending talent involved, the decision to downplay the role of percussion makes perfect sense but as a consequence of having Cuarteto Patria's Jose Martinez, Jorge Maturell and Eglis Ochoa laying down the rhythms (bolstered by balafon boss Lassana Diabaté and Baba Sissoko on talking drums), the resulting self-titled AfroCubism (World CIrcuit) album is naturally going to sound more like a rootsy Cuban son recording than anything associated with Toumani Diabate or Bassekou Kouyate. Of course, if someone hears a familiar echo of the multi-million selling Buena Vista Social Club album in the new 14-track AfroCubism release, that isn't really such a bad thing, particularly from a marketing standpoint.
The typical challenge with these all-star sessions – particularly when the musicians involved have never seen each other before, much less played together – is creating a band-like vibe with a group of stellar soloists. No such problem here. Listening to the way everything on the AfroCubism album seems to seamlessly fit in place while effortlessly swinging so hard, you'd think these guys have been knocking around together in clubs for years. Luckily everyone participating in AfroCubism has been a dependable sideman during their career and well understands the value of working as a sympathetic accompanist when called upon. So the fact that the the sessions were cut live with the whole cast getting down together in one big room didn't pose a problem.

“It was as though the musicians had been holding back their ideas and energy for that moment,” says Gold, who produced the album with Buena Vista engineer Jerry Boys. “After we’d waited so long, it all came together remarkably easily and spontaneously. The group had never played together before but the music just poured out and it continued to flow over the next few days.”
That they were able to record 17 songs complete in just five days at that first session in Madrid back in 2008, with another nine finished at a second session, is a good indication of just how well they connected. You'll have a rare chance to see AfroCubism in action when they make their Canadian debut at Montreal's Métropolis (59 Ste. Catherine East) on Friday, November 5 at 8 pm. Advance tickets are $34.50 and will likely sell out quickly since it's AfroCubism's only scheduled date in Canada.   

AfroCubism (World Circuit)

Mali Cuba
Al vaivén de mi carreta
Karamo
Djelimady Rumba
La Culebra
Jarabi
Eliades Tumbao  27
Dakan
Nima Diyala
A la luna yo me voy
Mariama
Para los Pinares se va Montoro
Benséma
Guantanamera




An introduction to AfroCubism




AfroCubism's first day in the studio



LINKS
myspace http://www.myspace.com/afrocubism
label http://www.worldcircuit.co.uk/#Home
Nick Gold discusses AfroCubism on the BBC