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Cooder and >> Ry Cooder keeps good company in The Buena Vista Social Club
by MATTHEW HAYS
Cooder, who's always had a fascination with exotic musical cultures, spearheaded the Buena Vista album, which was originally to be a cross-cultural collaboration between Cuban and African musicians. When the Africans couldn't make the trip, recording went ahead anyway. The album, which highlighted the talents of such never-before-celebrated musical geniuses as 89-year-old Compay Segundo and 70-year-old Ibrahim Ferrer, became a sensation, winning a Grammy and selling over a million albums. "It must be the timing," Cooder concludes. "The timing is absolutely everything in this business." Cooder was so taken with the album that he continued to record and perform with the Cubans, bringing them to North America on tour. He also handed a copy of The Buena Vista Social Club to long-time collaborator Wim Wenders, one of the directors for whom Cooder has composed scores (Paris, Texas and The End of Violence). "I thought Wim was humanistic and philosophical enough to really come up with something," Cooder says. "I felt this process should really be recorded on film as well." Wenders did decide to capture the musicians on film, their stories clearly begging for cinematic adaptation. The result is the documentary film version of The Buena Vista Social Club, 100 minutes of footage of the musicians in studio with Cooder and performing at Carnegie Hall. Cooder says he doubts the Buena Vista success could have happened even five years ago. "There's so much great music that no one ever hears. The fact of the matter is, music executives tend to think anything other than pop music won't sell. Take Celine Dion--that's mass marketing with the most aggressive vengeance you could imagine. Not everyone likes that sort of thing. You can force feed people for so long--look at Titanic--but there's a time when people say, 'I need something else.' "The scenes at Carnegie Hall were amazing. The crowd was going bananas. And it wasn't about money or power or fame. It was about the music, about some kind of connection." When Wenders pitched the film idea, Cooder was gung ho. But he insisted on not being the central figure in the film. "I was quite strict about that. That would simply have deflected attention from the real subjects of the film, the Cuban musicians." In addition to the film, Cooder has recorded another Buena Vista album focusing on the talents of Ferrer, to be released this summer. Cooder sees the film and recordings as a vital way of maintaining a sense of history. "I've seen enough of this stuff disappear. This is like a last stand for a lot of these people."
The Buena Vista Social Club screens as part of Magnifico, the summer film festival which runs June 26 at the Ex-Centris Complex. Info: 987-7440 |
Composer and musician Ry Cooder, relaxing in a Montreal hotel room, struggles to explain the popularity of his latest project, The Buena Vista Social Club. "I'm still quite astonished," he says. "I'm an expert on records that don't sell. I never thought I'd see this."