Cuba’s Buena Vista trumpeter Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal dies

Celebrated Cuban trumpet player Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal of the music collective Buena Vista Social Club, died in Havana on Monday, the Cuban Music Institute said. He was 91.

Mirabal “is considered one of the greatest trumpet players in Cuba and the world,” and his “death represents a sad loss for Cuban music and culture,” the institute said in a Facebook post. 

His funeral will be held on Tuesday in the Cuban capital Havana, it said.

Born on May 5, 1933 in the town of Melena del Sur in Mayabeque province, Mirabal began his musical career in 1951 and played the trumpet for more than 70 years.

He was a member of prominent Cuban orchestras, such as the Conjunto Rumbavana and the Orquesta Riverside, but it was his participation in the Buena Vista Social Club project that crowned his fame. 

Created in 1996, Buena Vista Social Club reunited veteran Cuban musicians, some of whom had slipped into obscurity but were coaxed out of retirement by Cuban star Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, the World Circuit’s Nick Gold and American guitarist Ry Cooder.

It became one of the most celebrated Cuban music projects, producing the eponymous Buena Vista Social Club album, which won a Grammy Award in 1998 and is the best-selling Cuban album of all time. A documentary of the same name made by German filmmaker Wim Wenders was nominated for an Oscar in 2000.