About

- The Analog Vault // Essential Listening -

Buena Vista Social Club was a phenomenon. A one off, feel good sensation. And one that led to a web of subsequent spin-offs, that benefited from the original success, but took it in surprising new directions.

On the album’s release, Nick Gold hoped that, given a fair wind, Buena Vista might sell 100,000 copies – a highly respectable figure in the world music field. Today the album’s sales stand at over eight million, making it the biggest-selling Cuban album in history. As one critic put it, Buena Vista has become “world music’s equivalent of The Dark Side of the Moon.”

“This is the best thing I was ever involved in,” Ry Cooder said prior to the album’s release in 1997. “ It's the peak, a music that takes care of you and nurtures you. I felt that I had trained all my life for this experience and it was a blessed thing.” - World Circuit