Fate, however, decreed otherwise. By the time of his death in Havana this past Sunday at the age of 95, the elder statesman of the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon, who had once played for spare change on street corners around the city of Santiago de Cuba, had traveled extensively, enjoyed worldwide fame, and sold more records than many folk artists -- if any -- could ever dream of achieving.
Perhaps it was a world tired of prefabricated musical celebrity that greeted Buena Vista Social Club with such enthusiasm that the record earned a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album in 1998. It was, after all, tremendously refreshing to hear a group of elder musicians play as well as they did, knowing they had been living in total obscurity until a visionary by the name of Ry Cooder had rescued them for all of us to enjoy. And at the head of that renaissance was an affable, talented, and musically seasoned 90-year-old who answered to the unlikely name of Compay Segundo.
His real name was Maximo Francisco Repilado Muoz, but he was known to the world by a moniker he acquired in the late Forties when he was a member of the popular musical duo Los Compadres. In 1955, when friction between band members compelled Compay Segundo to go his own way, the singer and guitarist continued to eke out a living by playing music. Four decades passed and then, as if out of the blue, in came Ry Cooder and the miracle.
The latter years of Compay Segundos career are proof that traditional music, artistic honesty, and personal authenticity need not be incompatible with international acclaim and commercial success.
