They say don’t meet your heroes, but the opposite proved true for Buena Vista Social Club book writer Marco Ramirez. After signing on to pen the musical’s script, he embarked on a research trip to Cuba, where he met the surviving members of the titular band whose stories he’s bringing to life onstage.
“For me, it was like meeting the Beatles,” says Ramirez. “Not only did I get to meet them, but they invited us into their homes. We got to break bread with them and talk to them about music.”
As a fan, talking to these living legends about their craft was a dream come true for Ramirez. As a writer, soaking up their expertise was crucial as he began shaping the musical’s narrative.
Buena Vista Social Club, which begins previews at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre February 21, is inspired by the Cuban musical ensemble and 1997 eponymous album, which, in turn, was named after a 1950s Afro Cuban social club in Havana, Cuba. The musical’s score flows directly from the Grammy-winning album that features beloved songs like “Candela,” “Chan-Chan,” and “Dos Gardenias.” Ramirez’s book roots itself in the recording session of the 1997 album, while blossoming into a retrospective narrative centered around four of the ensemble members, Omara Portuondo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, and Rubén González, as they navigate their lives and their artistry in 1950s Havana, set against a changing political landscape in Cuba.
This is not, however, a history lesson set to music. Instead, Ramirez prioritized providing an intimate look at the artists who not only became titans in Cuban culture, but whose music and legacies would go on to permeate beyond the country’s borders. Since working on the project, Ramirez has had an abundance of people share with him the impact the album had on them. He himself considers the songs foundational to who he is, with the trip to Cuba feeling like a cultural homecoming. Visiting the home of Eliades Ochoa, one of the primary singers on the record, stirred up emotions for Ramirez about his own attachment to the music as a Cuban American.
“I was raised around these songs,” Ramirez says. “There were moments where [Ochoa] sounded like my grandfather, who had passed. I got really emotional thinking about how I had my own personal history with these songs. [The record] was this big touchstone and a big cultural moment for me really embracing my Cuban heritage.”
Ramirez’s journey to Buena Vista started before the record even came out. He credits his grandfather for introducing him to these iconic songs while he was growing up in Miami.
“My grandfather had this little yellow Sony boom box above my grandmother’s washing machine, and he had this collection of tapes of all these old Cuban songs. My grandmother likes to say that back in Cuba, he wasted all of his wages on jukeboxes. He just loved music.”
Ramirez inherited his grandfather’s penchant for music, designating himself a “music nerd” who has always loved reading album liner notes and watching VH1’s Behind the Music documentaries. It was that perspective that helped him crack open the structure of Buena Vista Social Club. His trip to Cuba included a visit to EGREM Studios in Havana, where the band recorded the 1997 album — and where he felt a creative spark.
“We could have told this story in any number of ways, but I could feel that some pretty special things got made [at the studio] — there was something about the quality of the room,” says Ramirez. “Talking to all of them, they all had these great stories about the process of recording it, and it was so clear that they cherished making the record together in that room with no expectations from the outside world. That was how I realized that the story should focus on day one in the studio.”
It’s clear that the music is the heartbeat of the show. With Ramirez’s deep connection to the music, he is very protective of keeping its pulse alive. Since the beginning of the creative process, he was adamant about presenting the songs untouched and as they already existed, which meant not translating any of the Spanish lyrics, nor providing subtitles. Ramirez took on the challenge of building a story that would allow non–Spanish speakers to understand the songs through the story’s context. He also collaborated with the music team to ensure an authentic sound using the proper instrumentation.
“We did a couple of early workshops where we didn’t have a tres, which is a small Cuban guitar, and I kept saying, ‘Once we get a tres in there, it’ll sound right.’ And to me, at least, the minute we got this fantastic tres player in the band and he started playing the songs, it just sounded correct.”
After several extensions of the musical’s world premiere at Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theatre in 2023, Ramirez and the creative team have been making tweaks and adjustments to prepare for its Broadway premiere — mostly cleaning up and expanding certain moments. This also marks Ramirez’s Broadway debut, which feels like another cosmic cultural connection.
“Just yesterday I was at the theatre with [producer] Orin [Wolf],” says Ramirez. “It felt very nice. We knew we were following through on the promise we gave when we sat across from all of the families in Cuba. We told them, ‘We really want to tell your story with as much respect and love as possible.’ And here we are.”