Sunday, May 13, 2012

Top 100, Chan Chan, Buena Vista Social Club # 64



Story by Jane 


My song is 'Chan Chan', track one on the Buena Vista Social Club album. I first discovered Buena Vista Social Club sometime in the late nineties when the film featured in the line-up of our town's film festival. My Dad took my little sister and I to see it one night and I have lasting memories of being completely engrossed in the crumbling glamour of Havana and the incredible music being made by a group of such frail looking old men. At the time it represented everything exotic and interesting and exciting about the world - things I spent a lot of time wishing for as a girl growing up in Dubbo.

Years later, when I took myself off to live in Damascus I discovered that this track and this album was somewhat of an anthem for the odd assortment of students and wanderers that had found a place for themselves in the Middle East. When I first arrived in Damascus it was the end of summer and the middle of Ramadan. I moved into a crumbling house with a courtyard painted a dusty pink. The house was full of cats and housemates from all over the world. After classes each day I would walk home through the dusty city and spend the hot afternoons in the courtyard in the shade of the orange tree trying to study. In the background I would hear the news on Aljazeera, chaotic multilingual conversations and faltering arabic conversations. Often someone would be practicing the oud or the darbuka and periodically everything would stop as we waited out the call to prayer blasted through our house by the three local mosques.

In the evenings, everyone would settle in the courtyard to drink cheap whisky and discuss the problems of the world. We all thought we had the answers. Before long, and often in order to halt an argument, someone would pull out their laptop and scroll through their music. Inevitably they would come to Buena Vista Social Club and we would yell for them to stop skipping and let it play. I would sit there and feel so lucky and excited to be there. In those moments it felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be and anything was possible.


Artwork by Karin 



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