“I’m not going to retire in any way,” he said.
In the Broadway version, Portuondo is the star singer of the show. The distinctive details that have come to define it as a legendary artist are captured in the musical, from their characteristic style and personality to their emotional voice.
His son and manager, Ariel Jiménez Portuondo, said he believes that his mother “is well reflected” in the program. “They mixed the artist and personal life of Omara,” he said.
Central of the plot of the musical is the young man’s dream of making music for his people in Cuba at a time of political agitation and tensions such circumstances created between her and her late sister, Haydée Portuondo, who was also a beloved singer.
For those familiar with the music of Buena Vista Social Club, the new program feels intentionally designed to honor the legacy of artists such as Portuondo, that fans remember to popularize the songs they appreciate in their hearts. But also presents the timeless music to the new audiences. Theater attendees even insert a songbook in the printed program of the program with a brief history of the songs included in the musical.
One of those songs is “Tula fourth.” The animated Cuban Jam style melody invites musicians to improvise the lyrics, a local tradition of the city of Santiago, the Cuban son’s music center. But in the version that became famous for the Buena Vista Social Club, the band added its own turn to the original musical arrangement, Torres said.
Sitting at home with his lute, a traditional string instrument of Cuba, Torres showed how he and the late musician Manuel “El Guajiro” Mirabal improvised a new introduction for the song, which became the known version worldwide.
“Wherever I go, people know who I am,” Torres said. “They know my name, my last name, especially musicians.”
Before Buena Vista Social Club, it was rare to see a young musician playing classic instruments such as the double bass, according to Torres. But after the success of the band, that changed. He recalled that the old Havana was the center of musical quartets that kept their Cuban music alive.
Now things are different, Torres said. “A lot of music in Cuba is taking place, but it has nothing to do with Cuban music, with the rich tradition we have.
Relive the golden age of Cuban music
Portuondo, Valdés, Torres and Eliades Ochoa along with bandmates who have died since then, including Manuel “Puntillita” Licea and Mirabal, as well as to compare Second, Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González, who appear in the musical of the characters of the characters of the characters of the musical.
The album was recorded in six days in 1996 in the historic study of Havana Egrem. He sold more than 8 million copies, won a Grammy in 1997 for the best traditional tropical album and added to the National Preservation Recording Registry in the Congress Library in 2022.
“Even when the project stopped, success was so great … that it has not yet been forgotten,” Torres said. “When you think his time has passed, he is reborn.
The musicians were gathered by Cuban leader and composer Juan de Marcos González, along with the Executive of the British World Circuit, Nick Gold and the American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder. His trip was also documented in a homonymous film launched in 1999 and included in the National Film Registry in the Congress Library in 2020.
The project showed musical styles such as danzón, boleros and others that were popular in Cuba during their Golden Music age of the 1940s and 1950s. The group bears the name of an old music and live music club of Havana.
“Buena Vista Social Club is a milestone in Cuban music production and one of the most successful albums recorded in the twentieth century,” Marcos González wrote in a message to NBC News. “What Nick Gold and I began as a cultural adventure without great pretensions, just aspiring to a positive impact on the so -called ‘world music’ market, it quickly became a massive phenomenon, unexpectedly similar to that of conventional music.”
The musical “Buena Vista Social Club” is broken from the traditional theater format that separates the cast on the stage of the musicians, which are often hidden in the orchestra. In this version, those lines are blurred. The actors, dancers and musicians shine next to the stage, sometimes causing the audience to feel like they are in a concert, listening to live music in a dance club or simply a fly on the wall in a recording studio.
“Buena Vista Social Club, the musical, is an impressive work of art that transcends the values of a beautiful island, its culture and its creators in a transparent way, free of the Eurocentric paternalism of other excellent related works,” said by Marcos González.
While the group surviving members are not directly involved in the program, they were consulted for the musical. Everyone expects the musical to serve as an inspiration for younger generations that are not familiar with older Cuban music, in the same way that such musical traditions were transmitted in Valdés’ family.
Valdés studied music in Havana under the watchful eye of his father, Amado Valdés, a well -known Cuban jazz saxophonist. Now his daughter, Idania Valdés, sings in the orchestra that her father helped become famous.
She told NBC News: “It will be connected again, especially with young people who may not know so much about this project.
Orlando Matos reported from Havana, Carmen Sesín de Miami and Nicole Acevedo in New York.
