Chan Chan

Compay Segundo always insisted he did not compose "Chan Chan"; he dreamed it. By his account he woke one morning in 1984 with four notes in his head, heard as clearly as if a band were playing in the street below his balcony, and gave them words drawn from a children's tale he remembered, Juanica y Chan Chan. The song follows a couple gathering sand on the beach to build a house: he sifts it, she shakes the sieve, and her shaking makes him blush. The chorus names four neighbouring towns in Holguín province, a habit of son cubano. For more than a decade the song moved slowly. Compay recorded it with his group in Havana in 1985, but the state label EGREM did not issue the session until 1996. In 1987 he asked Eliades Ochoa to cut it with the Cuarteto Patria, partly because he needed new recordings of his older songs to claim royalties, and the two played it often at the Casa de la Trova in Santiago, where trova fans came to love it. Pablo Milanés recorded it with him in 1992, and Compay took it to Spain in 1994. Then, in March 1996, Compay, Ochoa and other veteran Cuban musicians recorded it again for the Buena Vista Social Club project. It opened their album, and became the group's signature song, carrying an old trovador's dream to international fame. Four notes heard in a sleeping man's head became one of the best-known songs Cuba has given the world.