There's nothing in music-nothing, really, in the entire world of soundlike human voices working in tandem. In unison or in harmony, vocal collaboration is a metaphor befitting music's relation to society: if we can sing together, maybe we can work together, too.
"Buena Vista Social Club"-a new musical, directed by Saheem Ali, for Atlantic Theatre Company, with a book by Marco Ramirez and music by the eponymous award-winning musical collective, the subjects of the 1999 documentary by Wim Wenders on which this show is based-draws its fun, its exuberance, and its occasional moments of emotional depth from its focus on how voices come together to change societies, or to convey their sicknesses. After a vivid opening number, the story begins in a recording studio in Havana, Cuba, where a young musicology student and bandleader, Juan de Marcos (Luis Vega), has come to ask a life-changing favor of the legendary singer Omara Portuondo (Natalie Venetia Belcon). He thinks that Cuban music hasn't got its due, that it's more than fit fare for tourists, that a voice like Omara's and the history she symbolizes shouldn't go unrecorded. He's assembled a band and booked studio time; all she has to do is show up.
Belcon's queenly Omara-modelled on the actual Omara Portuondo, who is showcased in Wenders's film-is spiky, remote, set in her ways. She's lived through the history that de Marcos can evoke only nostalgically in reference to the songs he loves. Those songs remind Omara of real people and real events, political interludes whose senselessness and brutality have left unmusical lacunae in her life. Now she's curt and uncollaborative perhaps the best indication of her current state of mind is that she sings not with a live band but over a prerecorded track. She's not a musician to make friends. Not anymore.
This story is from the December 25, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the December 25, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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