The Homeland's Cry: The Buena Vista Social Club and "La Bayamesa"

Today's random tune is by the Buena Vista Social Club. The Buena Vista Social Club was the name of a club in Havana, Cuba where musicians met and performed together in the 1940s at a time when new Latin styles were being created. Juan de Marcos González and Ry Cooder assembled a number of those musicians that had played there and recorded them for a CD in 1997. After the release of the CD, they were invited to play as a full ensemble in Amsterdam where filmmaker Wim Wenders captured the performance on film and interspersed that footage with interviews of the musicians in a documentary called Buena Vista Social Club. The documentary went on to receive an Academy Award nomination, and made stars of the once forgotten musicians as well as reviving interest in Cuban music and Latin music in general. This song, La Bayamesa, is a criolla and patriotic song about a woman from the city of Bayamo who tears up at memories of old traditions and yet answers the call of her homeland when needed. This La Bayamesa is not the national anthem of Cuba, which has the same name. It can be found on the 1997 CD Buena Vista Social Club.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buena_Vista_Social_Club