The Conductor

(Photo/Buena Vista Social Club/Alejandro Perez)

By Sneha Sinha

From the opening note, Buena Vista Social Club rang with nostalgia for a world I’ve never known. Without knowing Spanish, the songs carried me through oscillations between loss, liberation, pride, and joy with the strums of the tres (a three-stringed Cuban guitar), beats of the bongo, and shakes of maracas.

More than anything, I was entranced by the sheer coordination of musicians, dancers, and actors as they spun across the stage. I turned to whisper about it to Sophia, TMP’s Editor-in-Chief, and caught sight of the pianist’s image on a live feed by the audience. There, on the screen, was Marco Paguia - not just the pianist – but also the music director, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of the show. From that moment onward, I was mesmerized.

Paguia perched on his piano bench, maracas in hand. As Natalie Venetia Belcon, playing the lead singer, Omara Portundo of the Buena Vista Social Club ensemble, belted out “Candela,” Paguia imperceptibly cued the others. Without even looking at him, the musicians joined the symphony – guitarists, trumpeters, French hornists and a lone flautist (this was a contentious point in the show). 

After watching Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s portrait of American conductor Leonard Bernstein, I once fell into a YouTube rabbit hole on the craft of conducting. WikiHow breaks it down into three “easy” steps: 1) establish your conducting space; 2) indicate the beat; and 3) cue instruments and tempo changes. It sounds deceptively straightforward, but I recall the chaos of attempting it in middle-school choir—timing, coordination, and multi-tasking all at once. Usually, on Broadway, this sleight of hand happens in the pit. In Buena Vista Social Club, it unfolded in plain sight. 

Pagua spins magic with music that sings for a bygone time. The score comes from the original Buena Vista Social Club album, released in 1997 by an ensemble of Cuban veteran musicians, sparking a worldwide “Cuba-mania”. The original Buena Vista Social Club captured nostalgia for Havana’s golden era. This production, with Paguia at its center, added another layer: nostalgia for live performance itself, for the collective electricity only possible when one conductor, dozens of musicians, and an audience breathe in rhythm.