Cuban comet

By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death of Enrique Jorrin, the inventor of the cha-cha-cha, whose rhythmic brainstorm had gone global. My grandparents used to dance cha-cha-cha at Latin nights at the Grand Hotel in Leicester in the 1950s.

Rubén Gonzalez, Jorrin’s pianist, thought that his death spelled ‘the end of the old music’ and went into retirement, his piano destroyed by termites in the tropical humidity. Another contemporary who didn’t quite make his mark was Ibrahim Ferrer — he’d been in a moderately successful band Los Bucucos.

Ibrahim retired at about the same time, for similar reasons to Rubén — the work had dried up. Ibrahim, however, clung to what a santero (a local Afro-Cuban priest) had told him; that at the end of his life he would become celebrated. That seemed hopelessly far-fetched — he hit hard times and could be seen selling lottery tickets in the streets, and even shining shoes.

That they would go on to produce the bestselling Latin album in history seemed fantastical. But that’s exactly what happened when they became key members of the Buena Vista Social Club. Their eponymous first album would set off a boom not just in Cuban but in world music. Without any major promotion, that 1997 release rapidly sold a million. Wim Wenders’s film of the same name added rocket fuel to sales and it went on to sell eight million more. It became a number one in pop charts around the world. I toured with them to Japan, where they were selling out stadiums every night. Walking round Tokyo, they would stop the traffic.

Salman Rushdie called the summer of 1998 ‘that Buena Vista summer’ and before long hundreds of Cuban albums were released and thousands of Cuban musicians were touring the world and bringing much-needed hard currency back to Cuba.