Buena Vista Social Club is a Cuban ensemble that brought the golden age of Havana's dance halls back to the world stage. The group formed in 1996 when producer Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder gathered a dozen veteran musicians, many of them retired, to record the styles they had grown up playing: son, bolero, danzón and guajira. They took their name from a members-only club in Havana's Buenavista neighborhood, once a lively hub for music and dancing in the 1940s.
Among the standout voices were guitarist and singer Compay Segundo, the group's oldest member, pianist Rubén González, and singer-guitarist Eliades Ochoa. Their self-titled 1997 album became a global phenomenon, selling millions of copies, winning a Grammy Award, and introducing Cuban traditional music to a whole new generation of listeners. Most of the musicians were Cuban, carrying decades of experience playing in the clubs and orchestras of Havana and Santiago before the world rediscovered them.