"Buena Vista was the acceptable face of communism," says Simon Calder, The Independent's travel editor and author of Cuba in Focus. Some experts argue that the album represents neither today's Cuba, nor the romanticised pre-revolution Cuba, but a figment of the tourism industry's imagination. The album's success provided a boost to Cuba's growing tourist industry during the 1990s and, as The Economist noted in 2006, "in the tourist quarters of Old Havana it can seem at times as if every Cuban with a guitar has come out to sing the songs that Buena Vista made famous." The Buena Vista sound, however, doesn't necessarily represent modern Cuba, whose youth are today in thrall to other, more recent styles, such as salsa, reggaeton, heavy metal and hip-hop. How has the Buena Vista Social Club contributed to Cuba's global image? There's a group of Congolese musicians based in Paris called Kekele, who've made about six or seven albums since Buena Vista, and I suspect they wouldn't have existed without the Cubans' success." "The age of musicians ceased to seem to matter for a while after Buena Vista," says Gillett, "and in many countries producers conspired to find comparable groups of people who were veterans in their field. Since its original release, Buena Vista Social Club has sold seven million copies globally, making it the most successful world music album of all time, and opening the floodgates for a torrent of global talents hitherto unknown to most English-speaking audiences. What part did it play in the rise of world music? The oldest performer in the line-up was 89-year-old guitarist Compay Segundo, who also fronted his own band Los Muchachos until his death (at 95), also in 2003. Pianist Ruben Gonzalez was piano-less and suffering from arthritis when Cooder asked him to play on the Buena Vista LP he released two subsequent solo albums before his death in 2003. Ferrer was shining shoes for extra cash on the streets of Havana when he was asked to join the group Cooder later described him as "The Cuban Nat King Cole." He died in 2005, aged 78. Cooder's group consisted of 20 musicians including Lopez and Ferrer, the latter a highly successful singer the 1940s before seeing his soft singing style fall out of fashion.
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