Buena Vista Social Club

The album is credited to the Buena Vista Social Club, directed by Juan de Marcos Gonzalez and Cooder, and produced by Cooder. It was recorded in six days at EGREM Studios in Havana in March 1996. Cooder reached Havana by way of Mexico to avoid the US embargo, only to find that the African musicians had not received visas, so he and Nick Gold made an album of Cuban son with local players instead. Twenty musicians are credited, among them Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, Eliades Ochoa and Omara Portuondo.

The fourteen tracks open with Compay Segundo's Chan Chan and close with La bayamesa. The title came from a song Ruben Gonzalez was improvising around before a session, and Gold chose it as the name of the project. Cooder said it felt like a club, with everyone hanging out over rum and coffee. Cooder plays guitars on most tracks, and his son Joachim plays udu and dumbek.

It was released on World Circuit on 23 June 1997 and in the United States by Nonesuch on 16 September. It reached number 80 on the Billboard 200 and topped the chart in Germany, and has sold over eight million copies. It won the 1998 Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album, ranked number 260 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums in 2003, and was added to the US National Recording Registry in 2022.