‘Buena Vista Social Club,’ a Story of Second Chances, Gets One More

It was an improvisation to start with. In 1996, a recording session was scheduled in Havana combining Cuban and Malian musicians, however the Africans had visa bother and didn’t arrive. So as an alternative, an assemblage of veteran Cuban musicians, some popping out of lengthy retirement, recorded a group of basic Cuban songs. This was “Buena Vista Social Club,” which grew to become not simply the best-selling Cuban album ever but additionally a defining artifact of Cuban tradition beloved world wide.

More albums adopted: outtakes, offshoots, dwell recordings of performances just like the one at Carnegie Hall. Wim Wenders made a documentary movie. And now, nearly 30 years later, there’s a stage musical: “Buena Vista Social Club,” in previews on the Off Broadway Atlantic Theater Company.

This latest challenge began a couple of years again, when a producer with the theatrical rights to the album approached the Cuban American playwright Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”).

“The first question,” Ramirez recalled after a latest rehearsal, “was ‘Do you know this record?’ And for a Cuban kid who grew up right around the time the record came out, the answer was, ‘Of course.’ The next question was, ‘Do you think there’s a piece of theater here?’”

The seek for a solution to that query despatched Ramirez to Cuba, the place he interviewed a few of the surviving contributors. “It was about finding the emotional truth at the center of it,” he stated. “To me, it’s ultimately about a bunch of people who were given a magical opportunity to do a second take on their past, to make something right or just relive their youth.”

That’s the story that this “Buena Vista” tells. It dramatizes the making of the album in getting-the-old-gang-back-together style, but additionally, by flashbacks, recreates the pre-revolution, Golden Age Fifties Cuba of the musicians’ youth, suffused with nostalgia and remorse.

This is “the emotional truth behind the factual truth,” Ramirez stated. “It’s all inspired by real people and events, but I’m definitely taking many, many liberties in order to tell the best possible story.”

Where no liberties are taken is with the music. The dialogue is in English, however the songs — drawn from the broader “Buena Vista” catalog — stay in Spanish. “Old songs bring up old feelings,” a personality within the present says. “Given these lyrics, given the moods evoked by this music, what is the story that can emerge?” Ramirez stated. “At the beginning, I felt that I was communicating with the songwriters, who have been dead for 80 years or more, that my collaborators were ghosts.”

Eventually, dwelling collaborators joined him. The present, scheduled to run by Jan. 7 on the Linda Gross Theater, is directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) and choreographed by the married workforce of Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck (Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”). Casting was a problem, doubly so because the flashback construction necessitated discovering two folks (one older, one youthful) to play every of the distinctive real-life Buena Vista personalities.

“We had to find performers who could sing and play like the originals,” Ali stated. “But the Venn diagram of who also needed to act or dance was quite intense. They each do something with excellence, but they’re having to challenge themselves to do something different because of the thing we’re building together. We put on an international search for people who can embody the music in a way that felt truthful.”

The widespread denominator, Ramirez stated, is that everybody has a connection to the “Buena Vista” album. His comes by his Cuban grandparents, who performed the songs in his Miami house, in order that when the report got here out he already knew them; it was thrilling for a number of generations of his household to speak a few new album collectively. “The bittersweet irony is that they were nostalgic for Havana, and now I listen to this record and I’m nostalgic for them,” he stated.

Playing the older Ibrahim Ferrer — who was shining sneakers for cash when he was recruited to provide his golden voice to boleros for the Buena Vista recordings — is Mel Semé. He was a teen in Cuba on the time of the album’s launch.

“It became popular outside of Cuba first,” he stated. “But then we fell in love with this music again, and it became the music many of us aspired to play.”

After graduating with a level in classical percussion from the University of Arts, Semé moved to Europe, slowly constructing a profession as a drummer, guitarist, singer and bandleader. Since his performing expertise was restricted to commercials, he initially advised the Buena Vista musical workforce that possibly he wasn’t the particular person they had been on the lookout for.

“I’ve been feeling like a teenager again, learning a new skill,” he stated. Echoing a phrase utilized by many different solid members, he stated that enjoying Ferrer is a “huge responsibility,” however he has been helped by a deep reference to the singer, who discovered worldwide acclaim in his 70s and died in 2005.

“Even though my story is not exactly his story, I also found a little bit of success late in life,” he stated. “I always saw Ibrahim as a role model. No matter how late in life he got his chance, it was done with such grace.”

Renesito Avich performs Eliades Ochoa, the cowboy-hat-wearing musician who introduced a extra rural sound into the unique Buena Vista group. The music, he stated, “has been the background of my whole life.” He was born in Santiago de Cuba, Ochoa’s hometown, and even met him as soon as. A profitable musician who specializes within the tres, a model of guitar on the coronary heart of Cuban music, Avich can also be an performing novice. He stated that he feels the musical “is truly honoring what the music means for Cuban people like me.”

Or like Leonardo Reyna, who was born and raised in Havana earlier than pursuing a profession as a classical pianist in Europe. The “Buena Vista” album “had a tremendous significance for me,” Reyna stated, “helping me rediscover forgotten figures like Rubén González” — the virtuoso pianist Reyna performs as a younger man.

The present feels genuine, Reyna stated, “even from a writer and director who are not from the island,” due to its cultural sensibility and an consideration to musical particulars that he finds affecting. “Emotions arise from the distance many of us have had to travel, the separation of families, but also a sense of identity that is being reconstructed somehow,” he stated. “It is healing.”

Among the solid members who aren’t Cuban, Natalie Venetia Belcon is a Broadway actress who doesn’t converse Spanish. But when she was making ready to audition for the daunting position of Omara Portuondo, Buena Vista’s diva, the songs sprang a flood of recollections of her Trinidadian musician dad and mom. Kenya Browne, the Mexican-born singer who portrays the younger Omara, knew the music as one thing that her grandmother used to play. Her mom advised her that “Dos Gardenias,” a bolero she sings within the present, is one her great-grandmother sang typically.

Peck and Delgado — her dad and mom had been born in Cuba — have lengthy liked the album. They selected a monitor from it (“Pueblo Nuevo”) for the primary dance at their marriage ceremony. As quickly as they realized concerning the musical challenge, they requested to be concerned.

“Since the songs are in Spanish,” Delgado stated, “a lot of times our responsibility is to make the audience feel something through the universal language of dance, and you don’t even have to understand what’s being said.”

The number of dance in Cuba, Peck famous, consists of ballet, up to date, Afro-Cuban, an array of social dances. “We wanted to create a dance language that honors that, so it’s not one thing,” he stated. “And we also want to allow for our imaginations to come into play, our personal touch, so it doesn’t feel like documentary dance but alive.”

Peck recalled the expertise of strolling by Havana, listening to music enjoying and seeing folks transfer to it. “And then as soon as that sound starts to fade, another sound is in the distance rubbing up against it,” he stated. “That energy is something we want to weave through.”

Ali added: “It’s not a show where one thing stops and another begins. It all hands off to each other. We’re not following a template of what a musical is, but letting the music lead and allowing the songs to dictate how the story should evolve.”

Creating on this style required a lot trial and error, Peck stated. “All of us have had this huge process of building a lot and throwing stuff away. But that’s the only way to find the final recipe.”

Ramirez likened the method to that of Juan de Marcos González, the musician behind the unique “Buena Vista” recording: “He was the fixer, the guy who knew everybody involved, who knew where to find Omara and the right bass player. Like many young Cubans in that time” — the “Special Period” of economic collapse following the dissolution of the Soviet Union — “he wasn’t going to let go of an opportunity. To me, he’s the hero.”

“I’m not a jazz musician,” Ramirez continued, “but I feel like we’ve been improvising, making this up on the fly, building it as we go. I can’t think of a more Cuban thing to have done.”