It's not every day you get to meet your heroes, let alone cook them dinner. But that's exactly what happened to Cubana staff when the Buena Vista Social Club came to Sheffield.
Cubana's opening in November 2000 was very much inspired by the Buena Vista Social Club and the eponymous movie of the late nineties. Cubana was designed to represent the sort of bar you might find in a Havana back street.
The legendary Cuban band were in town to make a rare appearance at Sheffield City Hall, but being such a huge fan of the group Cubana owner Adrian Bagnoli pulled out all the stops, specially opening up the restaurant and inviting all 15 veteran band members to drop by for a spot of lunch.
"These guys are legendary", he said. "We invited them to lunch with us but I've got to admit that I was taken back a bit when I received a call from their tour manager confirming they were up for sampling out tapas."
For all the Cubana staff it was a very special day and night as it turned out...
Cubana head chef Fabian Cruz and assistant Erkland Xhaja arrived bright and early that morning to cook up a special tapas fit for Kings. Fabian said "We wanted to let them try a selection of our most popular tapas and specially prepared a few Cuban dishes to make sure they felt at home - these guys deserve the best of the best."
"They absolutely loved it" said Adrian, "The food, the music and the warm welcome - they were in their element and couldn't have been any happier. They may be international superstars but you'll never meet a more humble group of people. Band veteran "Cachaito" commented "From the heart, thank you so much - this has been the most memorable day of our time in England, the food was beautiful and you all made us feel very welcome".
That evening they performed to a sell out audience at the City Hall and following the gig all returned to Cubana with the pre-organised post-gig fiesta in full swing and resident Latino 4 piece band "Son Para Todos" understandably on top form. The place was packed, everyone was on a real high in awe of their Cuban heroes. They sat at their table, had yet more nibbles, knocked back one or two Mojitos then partied til the small hours. They socialised and danced with Cubana customers, one photograph after another and even 76 year old "Cachaito" decided to delay his beauty sleep by a couple of hours making sure he too had a piece of the action.
It was an amazing night that Cubana and their customers are not likely to forget nor repeat for a long time.
The history of the Buena Vista Social Club |
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The Buena Vista Social Club was a members-only dance club in the Buena Vista barrio, near the prestigious Miramar district in Cuba's capital Havana.
In 1996 Ry Cooder gathered together some of the greatest names in the history of Cuban music to collaborate on the best-selling and Grammy Award-winning album Buena Vista Social Club. This ground-breaking documentary, inspired by the album, includes appearances by legendary performers Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzales, Compay Segundo and many other renowned Cuban musicians.
The Buena Vista Social Club are now world renowned and have toured around the world, despite the deaths of core members Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer, the collective continues to perform with a revolving cast of members.
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An extraordinary line-up of Buena Vista Social Club stalwarts, together in a 15 piece band direct from Havana came to Sheffield City Hall to present some of the finest Cuban music ever made.
The heartbeat of the Buena Vista Social club, Cuban bass player Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez is the only musician who has played on every track on every album in the World Circuit Buena Vista Social Club series. Cachaito's ground-breaking debut album on World Circuit, Cachaito, won a BBC Award for World Music in 2002 and was hailed by The Independent as a 'masterpiece'.
Buena Vista Social Club performed in front of a sell out crowd at Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday 14 March 2007.
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