ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Nearly 30 years ago, the world was introduced to a group of artists from the golden age of Cuban music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DOS GARDENIAS")
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB: (Singing in Spanish).
SHAPIRO: The Buena Vista Social Club were musicians in their 70s and 80s who'd been all but lost to the public after the Cuban Revolution. They were reunited for a 1997 album, which sold millions of copies around the globe. Now, their unlikely story takes a new stage on Broadway. NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) There is a music studio in north Havana. Right now, you and I are a thousand miles away. But a sound like this, it tends to travel.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: The musical, "Buena Vista Social Club" is a story about second chances. The characters are named after the real musicians who made the famous album, but these are not their stories. In real life, in the 1950s, the musicians who later became the Buena Vista Social Club were performers on the island. Pianist Ruben Gonzalez played with big bands at the Tropicana. The other artists played in clubs around Havana until those were shut down during the revolution. Many of them took other jobs to make a living. The Cuba they were living in, it wasn't the Cuba they once knew. You can hear the longing in the original album in this song, "Veinte Anos," "20 Years."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VEINTE ANOS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #1: (As characters, singing in Spanish).
MARCO RAMIREZ: They kind of take on this other level of meaning, so they're not just necessarily about an old lover, but it's about the island itself. And it's about home. And these songs that feel like they're about missing somebody also start to feel like they're about missing a place.
SARMIENTO: That's Marco Ramirez. He developed the musical and wrote the script.
RAMIREZ: When I first started out, so many people who didn't speak any Spanish would tell me, oh, my God, this is like, my go-to wine and cheese record.
SARMIENTO: Ramirez says it was a sweet sentiment. But...
RAMIREZ: Part of my goal became, like, OK, I want you to hear this music in 3D next time. I want you to kind of understand some of the depth of the musicality, but also kind of lyrically and emotionally, what's under here.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VEINTE ANOS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #1: (As characters, singing in Spanish).
SARMIENTO: Like in real life, in the musical, a character named Juan de Marcos is trying to bring a group of older musicians together for an album. After that, the stories really diverge. But the important thing is that every character's story is about making things right. This really resonated with choreographer Patricia Delgado. Her parents left Cuba as children and never returned. So for her, "Buena Vista Social Club" is about healing some of those wounds.
PATRICIA DELGADO: People had to make choices to, like, uproot their life and build a new life for themselves and just try not to look back. I want to look back. This music helps me look back.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHAN CHAN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #2: (As characters, singing in Spanish).
SARMIENTO: That's standout number, "Chan Chan." Like many of the songs in the musical and on the album, it was written by one of the company members years before. The rest are folk songs and other standards.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB SONG, "CHAN CHAN")
SARMIENTO: There are about a dozen musicians on stage. They play trumpets, the Cuban bata drums and even the tres, which is kind of like a folk guitar.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHAN CHAN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking Spanish).
RAMIREZ: A lot of musicals are kind of built so that the songs can push the story forward. And what I really wanted to do here was make sure that the story pushed the songs forward.
SARMIENTO: Because it's the songs that carry the emotional truth of the story.
DELGADO: They're not easy emotions to navigate, and yet, once you do navigate them and once you allow them to, like, wash over you, they can free you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHAN CHAN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #2: (As characters, singing in Spanish).
SARMIENTO: Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHAN CHAN")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #2: (As characters, singing in Spanish). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
