This blog is all about those cold nights we sit in front of the fireplace and give in to all the useless but joyful stuff. As Oscar Wilde stated in the preface of his book The Picture of Dorian Gray: “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”
Join in if you feel like being useless for a while.
Listening to Buena Vista Social Club while drinking Port wine is an
experience in itself but it can get a lot better when the whole thing takes
place in a bar like the one above. It is not about political ideologies, it’s just
about being able to touch a little bit of history, it’s just about something
that cannot be put into words.
But getting back to Buena Vista Social Club, it was a social club like
many others where people would gather to meet friends. Nearly 50 years after
its closure its name inspired a very special album, an album that reached wide popularity
against all odds. Juan de Marcos González, a Cuban musician and band leader, and the
American guitarist Ry Cooder met with some traditional Cuban musicians, some of
them past members from the aforementioned social club, to do some recording
sessions. The result came out in 1997.
Two years later a documentary film of the same name by Wim Wenders about
the traditional music from Cuba was also released.
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