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Eliades Ochoa on his life in Cuba, fame with Buen
o Vista Social Club, and his eagerlyanticipated return to Ireland. WORDS John Brereton Black Photo: Massi Giorgeschi When two highlife musicians from Mali didn’t receive their visas to Cuba in 1996, where they were scheduled to record a collaborative album with some Cuban musicians, it posed the records producers Ry Cooder and Nick Gold (the British world music producer of World Circuit Records) with a big dilemma. Cooder and Gold thankfully changed their plans and decided to record an album of Cuban son music with local musicians instead. Cuban musicians already involved in the African collaboration project included bassist Orlando “Cachaito” López, guitarist Eliades Ochoa and musical director Juan de Marcos González, who had himself been organizing a similar project for the Afro-Cuban All Stars. A search for additional musicians led the team to singer Manuel “Puntillita” Licea, pianist Rubén González, trumpeter Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal and octogenarian singer Compay Segundo, who all agreed to record for the project. Cooder, Gold and de Marcos organized a large group of performers (twenty are credited) and arranged recording sessions at Havana’s EGREM Studios, formerly owned by RCA records, where the equipment and atmosphere had remained unchanged since the 1950s. The outcome was the iconic Buena Vista Social Club album, the biggest selling World Music album ever which became, helped somewhat by Wim Wenders superb documentary of the same name, a cultural touchstone for millions worldwide and a gateway into a country that has been economically suffocated by a US trade embargo and subjected to a conservative, right wing leaning, political propaganda campaign since Fidel Castro overthrew the barbaric regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Born in the district of Songo La Moya, a small municipality in Southern Cuba, Eliades Ochoa built his repertoire from Cuban traditional music, in particular sons, guarachas, guajiras, and boleros. As a child, he learned to play guitar and tres (an adapted guitar), and also began singing. In 1958 he 15