Afro Cubism

Music is the universal language. It is incredible that every person who hears something is affected differently by it, and every person who learns to play a tune will play that tune differently. Some might call it style, and others might just call it personal expression.

Either way, the beauty of music is that is requires no real learning curve- you don't have to speak Portuguese to understand why a bossa nova song is great, and you don't really need to understand music theory to know that Beethoven was on to something special.

There might be exceptions, of course. (Free jazz certainly comes to mind.) Being a musician surrounded by other musicians in a community can often be difficult, because it's easy to loose sight of the fact that a vast majority of the listening (and buying) public are not musicians. They don't give a fuck how a song is made, just that they enjoy listening to it. Understanding the technique may further the appreciation, but there's one thing that cannot be taught in any school: soul. All the greatest have it, and when you see it you just know.

The Buena Vista Social Club was a Cuban music club that thrived as one of Havana's hottest places to dance to great music in the 1940s. The place served as a hotbed of great musicians, who played son music, a mixture of traditional Cuban music with pop and jazz, together for the masses of Cuban clubbers. (Back when clubs were filled with swave dudes and suits and gorgeous women, not skanks and club rats). The club was shut down shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when the Communist government made it difficult for anyone to put on a show with good music. Fuck the man.

In the mid 1990's, however, producer Nick Gold invited guitarist Ry Cooder to a session where members of the old Cuban legend to collaborate with African high-life musicians. Everyone showed up but the Africans, who couldn't get their vistas approved to come. Since the studio was already booked, the remaining cast decided to record some son music. Made in just six days, The Buena Vista Social Club was never supposed to happen the way it did. But after its creation, the record was an international smash that won both five million copies in sales and a Grammy.

More then a decade later, the original project has been resurrected. Just check out the video for the rest. Awesome.