Overview
When Buena Vista Social Club opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on March 19, 2025, it brought Broadway audiences into a musical world rarely placed at the center of a Broadway stage: the sounds, histories, and cultural memory of Cuba. Inspired by the musicians behind the landmark 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club, the musical moves between 1950s Havana and the recording sessions of the 1990s that unexpectedly brought an older generation of Cuban musicians to international attention. (Tony Awards) At the center is Omara Portuondo, portrayed both as a young singer and as an older artist returning to the recording studio. Around her are theatrical versions of musicians including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González, Eliades Ochoa, and Juan de Marcos González. In the 1990s, producer and musician Juan de Marcos gathers veteran Cuban performers to record music whose traditions reach back decades. The recording sessions become a doorway into the past. Suddenly, we are in Havana before the Cuban Revolution. We encounter younger versions of these musicians when careers, relationships, racial divisions, and political upheaval shaped the choices available to them. Songs including “Chan Chan,” “Dos Gardenias,” “El Cuarto de Tula,” “Candela,” “Veinte Años,” and “Buena Vista Social Club” are performed in their original Spanish. The music is not translated because, in a sense, translation is the show's argument: you do not have to understand every word to understand what music can carry across time. (Buena Vista Social Club)
Historical Era
The musical moves principally between two Cubas: the 1950s and the 1990s. The first is a Havana famous internationally for nightlife, casinos, hotels, clubs, and music but also shaped by dictatorship, economic inequality, racial discrimination, and growing political unrest.
In 1959, Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista. The Cuban Revolution fundamentally transformed the country's political, economic, and cultural institutions and eventually reshaped Cuba's relationship with the United States. The second period arrives decades later. By the 1990s, many musicians associated with Cuba's earlier musical traditions had grown old, and some had largely disappeared from international attention. Then came an extraordinary recording project. In March 1996, musicians gathered in Havana for sessions organized through World Circuit. Juan de Marcos González had long wanted to record veteran performers associated with the music of Cuba's earlier decades. Those sessions ultimately produced the album Buena Vista Social Club, released in 1997. It became an international phenomenon, eventually selling millions of copies. (Buena Vista Social Club) Music Before Politics One of the musical's most important choices is refusing to treat Cuban history as merely a sequence of political events. Politics matters enormously. But history is also carried through sound. Son, bolero, danzón, Afro-Cuban rhythms, jazz influences, percussion traditions, and other musical forms reveal Cuba as a place created through centuries of cultural exchange. That is especially important because Cuban music cannot be separated from the history of the African diaspora. African rhythmic traditions mixed with European musical forms and instruments across generations, producing genres that eventually influenced music far beyond Cuba—from salsa and Latin jazz to popular music in the United States and elsewhere. The show therefore asks audiences to experience history not only intellectually but physically. Sometimes a rhythm can preserve something that a textbook cannot. Race and 1950s Havana The musical also complicates romantic images of pre-revolutionary Havana. Nightclubs might celebrate Afro-Cuban music while Black Cubans simultaneously experienced racial discrimination in the society outside them.
That contradiction becomes important in the younger characters' relationships and professional opportunities. Music can bring people together. The society producing that music can still divide them. This prevents the show's nostalgia from becoming entirely uncomplicated. The Havana remembered through music may be beautiful, but memory can make the past look more harmonious than it actually was. The musical allows the beauty of Cuban culture and the inequalities of Cuban history to exist at the same time. Omara and the Cost of Choice By centering much of its dramatic narrative on Omara, the musical gives its historical sweep a personal anchor. Young Omara is developing her identity as a performer while negotiating relationships, family, ambition, and the racial and political structures surrounding her. When the musical returns to the older Omara, the past is no longer abstract. Choices made decades earlier still exist inside her. This is where Buena Vista Social Club becomes more than a jukebox musical. The recording studio does not simply give older musicians an opportunity to perform familiar songs again. It requires them to confront the people they used to be. Music becomes a kind of memory technology. A melody can reopen something that appeared to have been buried for decades. The Album That Resurrected Careers The actual Buena Vista Social Club album became one of the great rediscovery stories in twentieth-century popular music. The sessions brought international attention to veteran Cuban performers, several of whom experienced remarkable late-career renaissances.
Musicians including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Compay Segundo, Omara Portuondo, and Eliades Ochoa became known to audiences around the world. The musicians subsequently toured internationally, and the project culminated in a celebrated Carnegie Hall concert in 1998. Filmmaker Wim Wenders documented the musicians and their journey in his acclaimed film Buena Vista Social Club. (Buena Vista Social Club) There is something extraordinary about that trajectory. These were not young performers being introduced as the next generation of stars. Many had already lived entire musical lives. The world simply started listening again.
Production Innovation
The Broadway production makes one particularly important decision: the musicians are visible. The band is not treated as an anonymous accompaniment hidden beneath the stage. It is part of the event. That choice changes the relationship between music and story. When a percussionist plays, we see the physical technique producing the rhythm. When instrumentalists exchange musical ideas, the interaction becomes theatrical action. Dance works similarly. Choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck created movement that does not merely decorate the songs. Bodies become another way the musical communicates history and culture. The distinction between actor, dancer, singer, and musician becomes intentionally porous. This feels particularly appropriate for a show about a musical tradition transmitted from person to person. Music That Needs No Translation Most of the show's dialogue is in English. The songs remain largely in Spanish. (Broadway.com) For an English-speaking Broadway audience, that choice matters. The production does not stop to explain every lyric.
Instead, audiences are asked to understand through voice, rhythm, movement, context, and emotion. That experience reinforces the show's larger argument about cultural transmission. Language matters enormously. But language is not the only way human beings understand one another. A singer can communicate longing before an audience knows exactly what the words mean. A percussion rhythm can produce collective energy without explanation. In Buena Vista Social Club, the supposed language barrier becomes part of the theatrical experience rather than something the production needs to eliminate. Broadway and Global Musical Culture Buena Vista Social Club also marks an important stage in Broadway's increasing internationalism. Broadway has always absorbed musical traditions from outside the conventional theater score, but those traditions have often been reshaped to fit Broadway expectations. Here, the relationship works differently. The production asks Broadway to make space for Cuban music on its own terms. That places the musical alongside works such as The Band's Visit, Once, Hadestown, and Maybe Happy Ending, which expanded Broadway's musical or geographic vocabulary in very different ways. The question is no longer simply: What sounds like a Broadway musical? It becomes: What kinds of music can Broadway learn how to hold?
Historical Significance
Buena Vista Social Club became one of the most acclaimed new productions of the 2024–25 Broadway season. It received major Tony recognition, including nominations for Best Musical, Best Book, Best Direction, scenic design, costume design, lighting design, and other categories. (Tony Awards) At the 2025 Tony Awards, Natalie Venetia Belcon won Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as the older Omara. Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck won Best Choreography, Marco Paguia won Best Orchestrations, and Jonathan Deans won Best Sound Design of a Musical. (Tony Awards)
But perhaps the most meaningful recognition was unusual. The musicians who make up the show's band received a Special Tony Award. (Tony Awards) That award feels particularly appropriate for this musical. In many Broadway productions, musicians are essential but largely invisible. In Buena Vista Social Club, they are not simply supporting the story. They are part of what the story is about. Preservation Versus Living History It would be easy to describe the original Buena Vista Social Club project as an act of musical preservation. But “preservation” can suggest putting something safely behind glass. That is not what happened. The musicians played. They recorded. They toured. New audiences danced to their music. Later musicians absorbed their influence. And decades afterward, Broadway performers and musicians began playing those songs again. That makes Buena Vista Social Club especially important to the idea of Broadway as living history. Culture survives not simply because someone archives it. Culture survives because someone performs it again.
Why It Resonates With Me
What I find most powerful about Buena Vista Social Club is the idea that music can function as an archive without ever becoming a museum piece. The musicians behind the original album carried decades of Cuban history in their voices, rhythms, instruments, and memories, and when they entered the studio in the 1990s, the world did not simply “discover” old music—it encountered a tradition that had continued living even when international audiences were no longer paying attention. I also love that the Broadway production keeps the musicians visible and the songs in Spanish. It trusts the audience to listen
before everything is explained. For me, that makes Buena Vista Social Club a perfect example of Broadway as living history: the past is not preserved by freezing it in place. It survives when another musician plays the song, another performer inhabits the memory, and another audience chooses to listen.
Additional contemporary productions—including Hell's Kitchen, Death Becomes Her, Just in Time, and future Broadway premieres—demonstrate that Broadway's story continues to be written with every new season.
Conclusion
Unlike the previous galleries, this one has no definitive ending. Broadway remains a living art form. Every season introduces new voices, new technologies, and new interpretations of what musical theatre can accomplish. Some productions become cultural landmarks; others quietly influence the next generation of artists. History continues to unfold with every opening night. This exhibition concludes here, but Broadway itself does not. Its greatest innovations may still lie ahead. As you leave My Broadway, remember that every musical—whether a century-old classic or a brand-new premiere—is part of an ongoing conversation between artists, audiences, and history. The curtain may fall at the end of each performance, but the story of Broadway is never truly finished. I actually think this is a stronger ending than stopping with today's Broadway. A historical exhibition shouldn't end with "the latest shows"—it should end by helping visitors reflect on why Broadway matters. I would, however, slightly restructure the last three sections. Instead of treating them as chronological galleries, they become interpretive galleries, much like the final rooms in a museum that synthesize everything visitors have seen.
Gallery IX
Broadway Reimagined
The Revivals That Changed Broadway
Theme: Great musicals are never finished. Every generation rewrites them. Instead of introducing new musicals, this gallery asks: Why do revivals matter? Topics include: - Revival vs. reproduction - How directors reinterpret classics - Changing social values - New choreography - New orchestrations - Modern casting - Gender-swapped productions - Race-conscious casting - Historical reevaluation Exhibition Cards Rather than discussing the original productions again, each card examines why a particular revival became historically important. Suggested cards: 1. Company (2021) 2. Into the Woods (2022) 3. Parade (2023) 4. Merrily We Roll Along (2023) 5. Cabaret (1998 / 2014 / 2024) 6. Chicago (1996 Revival) 7. Gypsy (multiple landmark revivals) 8. Sunset Boulevard (2023–24) 9. Sweeney Todd (2023)
