Neustadt

Neustadt compares the Buena Vista Social Club album and film- the best selling Cuban recording artist outside Cuba- with La Charanga Habanera and their album Tremendo Delirio- Cuba’s highest selling album inside the country. Neustadt shows that the Buena Vista Social Club depiction, which insinuates that Cuba has not progressed since the revolution, is off base. La Charanga Habanera has younger musicians, performing a style called timba, which mixes Afro-Caribbean rhythms with hip-hop and rap. La Charanga Habanera’s lyrics include thin metaphors for contemporary and taboo issues like sex and prostitution. They convey a young, rebellious image of themselves, featuring condoms on their album cover, and are known for wild behavior in the media. BVSC, meanwhile, features old musicians, performing son, and its cover implies a timelessness in Cuba. Neustadt finishes by insinuating that record companies (and Ry Cooder and Nick Gold who produced BVSC) are essentially pimping out Cuban music, culture and identity for shared revenues.
DQ: Why might the BVSC aesthetic- music, scenes pictured in the movie, etc.- be more appealing to a world or US audience?