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Buena Vista Social Club music biography continued...

members club in Havana, Cuba that held dances and musical performances, becoming a popular place for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s. In the 1990s, nearly 50 years after the club was closed, it inspired a recording spearheaded by Cuban musician Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder, featuring traditional Cuban musicians like Compay Segundo, Rubén González, and Ibrahim Ferrer-- veterans who had played at the club during the height of its popularity. The recording, which itself was named Buena Vista Social Club after the Havana institution, became a worldwide success. It sold more than five million copies and won a Grammy award in 1998. Because of the success of the album, the ensemble was encouraged to perform with a full line-up in Amsterdam in 1998. German director Wim Wenders captured the performance on film, followed by a second concert in Carnegie Hall, New York City for a documentary that included interviews with the musicians conducted in Havana. Wenders's film, also called Buena Vista Social Club, was released to critical acclaim, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary feature and winning numerous honors including Best Documentary at the European Film Awards.



The international success of the Buena Vista Social Club prompted a renewed interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music as a whole. Some of the Cuban performers later released critically acclaimed solo albums and recorded collaborations with international stars from different musical genres. The "Buena Vista Social Club" name became a brand name that represented the glories of Cuba's "musical golden age" between the 1930s and the Cuban Revolution. In 2003, the "Buena Vista Social Club" was listed by the New York based Rolling Stone magazine as #260 in The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time A concert CD, At Carnegie Hall, drawn from the same triumphant show that Wenders featured in his documentary, was released in 2008, reintroducing the famed musician to a whole new generation of fans.