Old men from Havana take a bow at Carnegie Hall

The Buena Vista Social Club album had been recorded in Havana over six days in 1996, almost by accident, after the African musicians Ry Cooder had planned to work with failed to get visas. Cooder and the producer Nick Gold instead gathered veterans of Cuba's pre-revolutionary golden age, some retired, some forgotten: Compay Segundo, Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo, Eliades Ochoa. The record went on to sell more than eight million copies and won a Grammy in 1998.

The original line-up played only a handful of concerts together: two in Amsterdam in April 1998 and this one, at Carnegie Hall on 1 July. Wim Wenders filmed it as the finale of his documentary, and the film's most quoted images come from that night: Ferrer wandering the streets of Manhattan, the musicians gazing at the shop windows, and at the end of Chan Chan the Cuban flag unfurled on the Carnegie stage during the ovation.

The United States embargo made the trip itself a small diplomatic feat. The recording of the concert was not released until 2008, ten years on, by which time Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Ibrahim Ferrer had all died, and the film had turned a set of half-forgotten names into the best-known Cuban musicians in the world.