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"&lt;p&gt;It makes some kind of cosmic sense that Ry Cooder &amp;#x2014;  a slide guitarist whose collaborations with Indian classical musicians and Tex-Mex stars have yielded recordings of rare and unconventional beauty &amp;#x2014;  would wind up in Cuba. The island is one of those places where there are few barriers between high and mass culture, and &lt;em&gt;folklore&lt;/em&gt; isn&amp;apos;t something that gathers dust in museums. For a category-basher like Cooder, it&amp;apos;s almost heaven: Hip-hop kids know the words and music of Beny Mor&amp;#xE9;, the prototypical Cuban singer of the &amp;apos;50s; the decades-old pulses of rumba and son turn up in current radio hits.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;em&gt;Buena Vista Social Club&lt;/em&gt;, Cooder was looking for the old stuff &amp;#x2014;  storysongs handed down through generations, rhythms and melodies that were popular before the revolution became a glimmer in young Fidel Castro&amp;apos;s eye. Aiming for the front-porch-casual feeling of traditional Cuban sextets, Cooder gathered a group of active and semiretired artists, including magical vocalists Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer, to revisit the lovelorn ballads, patriotic hymns and gentle son-based dance numbers heard in swank Havana lounges as far back as the 1920s.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Though the musicians honor the general outlines of these compositions, Cooder can&amp;apos;t resist the impulse to stretch the traditional-folk-song settings. His curiosity is a two-edged sword: Sometimes, like on the stately &amp;quot;Chan Chan,&amp;quot; his moaning, pitchbending lead lines enhance the bittersweet feeling of the melody. Other times, particularly on &amp;quot;Orgullecida,&amp;quot; the Western swing-guitar ad-libs become intrusions, dispatches from a more cluttered (and cynical) age that distract from the world-weary testimony of the singers. But Cooder never tramples the songs. He knows that his guitar embellishments can&amp;apos;t do much to improve these wistful melodies, enduring reminders that in Cuba, the wisdom of the ages still counts for something.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/buena-vista-social-club-19970918>