About this Album
Buena Vista Social Club, the Grammy Award–winning 1997 World Circuit / Nonesuch Records album produced by Ry Cooder, is the biggest-selling world music album ever, with more than eight million records sold to date. The Cuban musicians from the album played a sold-out, one-night-only concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall on July 1, 1998. That show became the climax of the acclaimed 1999 Wim Wenders documentary about the musicians, also called Buena Vista Social Club.
Ten years later, that evening’s performance will be released by World Circuit / Nonesuch Records this fall as Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall—meticulously mixed edited and mastered by Cooder and World Circuit label head Nick Gold (who executive produced the 1997 album). It will feature performances by the original Buena Vista Social Club musicians including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben González, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Cachaíto López, and Guajiro Mirabal. Though all of these musicians subsequently went on to resurrect great solo careers, the intervening years have brought the loss of Ferrer, Segundo, and González. Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall is only the second release for the original members.
A popular song from the original Buena Vista Social Club album, “Chan Chan,” opened the Carnegie Hall show; that track is now available in the Nonesuch Store—10 years after the famous concert. As the Los Angeles Times reported in its 1998 Carnegie Hall review, “When the musicians finally walked on stage, the crowd stood and cheered, then erupted at the opening strains of ‘Chan Chan,’ much as a rock audience does on hearing a band’s biggest hit.”
