The Buena Vista Social Club was such a runaway success, it’s easy to forget that it was also an accident. Originally the project was supposed to be a collaboration between Cuban and Malian musicians, but due to visa issues, only the Cubans made it to the studio. So they did what they do, and garnered Grammys for it—and eventually the Malians got to join in.
The resulting album, 2010’s Afrocubism, is just exquisitely beautiful—flickering strings and melodies, just a mellow delight from start to end. As the artists toured the United States in 2011, a ponytail-sporting Banning Eyre and video producer Nova Ami got to sit down with members of the band to talk about talking—oh and also about music. Check it out.
And if you like this and want to see more, you can do something about it: Right now we’re consolidating the Afropop archive, gathering all of our old tapes, digital, audio, video and otherwise, and getting ready to sort and digitize them. It’s exciting—there’s so much great stuff in there—but also carries with it some expenses. So we’re raising money to compile, store and start sorting this wealth of material.
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