He’s been described in the music world as “Cuba’s Johnny Cash.” His rugged features, signature hat and cowboy boots only add to his “man in black” image.
But Eliades Ochoa’s true fame is rooted in being an original member of the wildly popular Buena Vista Social Club, the mostly elderly Cuban musical band whose 1997 album hit the top of the U.S. charts.
It’s Ochoa's famous voice fans hear on the album’s iconic opener ‘Chan Chan’, an elegant and haunting song.
Ochoa, now 77 years old and living in Madrid, is among one of the last surviving members of the group.
He and his daughter and manager, Evora, sat down with WLRN’s Michael Stock, host of Folk & Acoustic Music to talk about the Buena Vista Social Club and his latest solo album, Guajiro.
He said his experience with the Buena Vista Social Club marked a dramatic turn in his career as a musician.
“It changed my life. It changed traditional Cuban music,” Ochoa told WLRN in an interview in Spanish and translated by his daughter.
“After the boom of the Buena Vista Social Club, a lot of Cuban bands that had performed for years — not abroad but only in Cuba — were forgotten,” he said. “Then they started going outside of Cuba and a lot of people were booking shows for all the Cubans band that were still in the island.”
The full interview, which includes Ochoa performing two songs from his latest album, airs Sunday, March 10, beginning at 3 p.m.
Ochoa will be performing live Saturday, March 16, during the Afro Roots Fest 2024 in Miami Beach. The event is presented by the Miami-based non-profit Community Arts & Culture.
A musical upbringing
Ochoa told WLRN that he grew up around music, noting that his mother and father were both musicians in rural Cuba. He was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 22, 1946.
He fondly recalls hearing again and again the song A Baracoa Me Voy by Antonio Machín, one of the most recorded Cuban singers of the last century. It was one of his parents’ favorite songs.
The album Buena Vista Social Club — and a 1999 film by the same name —introduced rich strains of Cuban music like his to millions of Americans cut off from the communist island by the U.S. embargo.
In 2015, the group performed at the White House before President Barack Obama and was the first Cuban group to do so since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
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Ochoa has found plenty of success following in the musical footsteps of the Buena Vista Social Club.
He’s released nine albums and won four Latin Grammys. His new album, Guajiro, was produced by Demetrio Muñiz and features Blades, Joan As Police Woman, and Charlie Musselwhite.
In the WLRN interview, Ochoa strummed on his guitar and played Creo En La Naturaleza (I Believe in Nature), a bolero he wrote and included in his latest album.
“The audience asks for it a lot in the concerts,” said Ochoa.
He also played another song from the album, Pajarito Voló (The little bird flew), which features famed Panamanian musician, singer and composer Rubén Blades.
The story of the Buena Vista Social Club never grows old.
Last year, a new musical — Buena Vista Social Club — debuted in New York City, recounting the group's rocketing to fame some 40 years after first getting together.
