The best thing about Buena Vista Social Club and its musicians is that they are representative. A large, active Cuban musical tradition, of which BVSC is one example, thrives in the hotels and halls of Havana, Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba, and the like.
What has happened here is a marketing coup that ought to be celebrated rather than derided, for it has brought the richness of Cuban son to our ears. If it had not come in the picturesque and personality-rich form of Ibrahim, Compay, and their pals, it would have happened via some other coterie of sonistas who looked and sounded much like them. They are everywhere.
Meanwhile, let us love the ones we’re with:
An understated elegance drives this music forward. By other standards, it may appear underproduced or even quaint. On its own terms, it is neither. It would be a mistake for the listener to give into the temptation to smile condescendingly and define the music in terms of what it is not or has not.
Rather, one must walk the humid streets of Havana with these musicians and revel in what it is, what it has.
For example, a practiced irony of lyric. a perfectly matched instrumental and vocal relationship where no subset of either dominates the others; and the redolence of some very good cigar smoke.
Then there is the magical capacity for viewing a 70-year-old musician as a man at the height of his powers rather than a has-been who just won’t stop flogging the horse. Herein lies much of the music’s charm.
There are less edifying sights available these days than lithe Cuban men and women of nursing home age nosing about in unhurried and musical enjoyment to the admiration of their compatriots and, now, of us.
Canter Bridge 
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