31 Buena Vista Social Club (1997)

The Buena Vista Social Club was by far Cooder's biggest commercial success. At the time, he probably thought it was business as usual – working with a bunch of interesting and skilled musicians from a different musical culture, as he'd done so many times before. But this time he hit the jackpot. The importance of the album and the subsequent documentary cannot be overstated. It is the most popular recording of Cuban music in history, and it opened up the island's culture to the West as never before.

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