The honorary Cuban

By PHILIP SWEENEY

Hang on, is this for the arts or the motoring pages? We have just finished discussing Ry Cooder's '55 Nash - "beautiful little car, designed by Farina" - and the yellow Buick on the cover of Into the Purple Valley, and we're on '59 Cadillac tailfins - "standard on all Cadillacs, the Fleetwood, the El Dorado, from '49 to '59, the signature of Harley Earl, the Perez Prado of car design ... "

Cooder's life seems to be a quest for exquisite period-style in cars, instruments, musicians. We're sitting in a large suite in Paris' Le Bristol hotel looking at the newly arrived sleeve photo for Cooder's latest album, Mambo Sinuendo.

It's a striking red and silver closeup of either two lipsticks on a chrome arrow flight, or a detail of Earl's legacy to humanity, the '59 Caddy tailfin.

Vintage American cars, mambo ... yes, Cooder's been to Cuba again - and the result is not one, but two records. One is the follow-up to the hit solo album of Ibrahim Ferrer, the elderly Havana vocalist plucked from impecunious obscurity by the Buena Vista Social Club recordings seven years ago.

Cooder produced Ferrer's new Buenos Hermanos and was one of the core group of musicians who played on both records. Among those musicians was one rather important Cuban, the electric-guitarist Manuel Galban, whose echoey bass twang blends in with the soughing strings behind heart-tugging Ferrer boleros such as Mil Congojas. Galban is the co-star of Mambo Sinuendo, the other album.

Cooder, a man of unfailing musical perspicacity, isn't about to hold out unrealistic claims for the 76-year-old Ferrer's vocal performance on Buenos Hermanos.

Isn't Ferrer's voice, frankly, near the end of its recording life? "Well, I think you're right," says Cooder. "It's the top end that goes through use, but at the same time, Ibrahim is bolder now, more vigorous, capable of handling really complex phrasing.

"I don't think I'm going to have the opportunity to build around a voice like that again. But you've got to recognise the facts of age, and the clock's ticking all the time."

In his race against time, Cooder has more than the frailty of musical flesh to contend with, especially when it comes to Cuba. The two new Cooder Cuban CD releases arrived together because they had to be made together.

"I had a year to get these two projects done, and it's really complicated work." Why the year's deadline? Because of "my little licence from Clinton", says Cooder.

Thereby hangs a chunky legal monograph on US-Cuba trade relations, and the explanation for the appearance in the Mambo Sinuendo CD credits of un-rock-star names such as Congressman Howard Berman, the architect of the Berman Amendment that sought to exempt art from the American trade embargo, and Richard Popkin, an attorney specialising in US-Cuba trade law.

The Buena Vista success resulted in a lengthy legal imbroglio for Cooder, including prosecution for contravention of the Trading With The Enemy Act.

But following a year's lobbying by the guitarist and his supporters, Bill Clinton instructed the Treasury Department to issue a rare one-year licence for Cooder to resume his "enemy collaboration".

Top of Cooder's list of collaborators in Havana was Galban, "a real electric guitarist who could do something beautiful with a magnetic pick-up, not just some guy with hair and a lifestyle".

Galban made his name as sole purveyor of "twang" in a country where electric guitarists were rare. Between 1963 and 1973, he was the musical director of Los Zafiros, a quartet of sharp-suited young vocalists whose mix of Latin doowop made them, briefly, the Beatles of Cuba.

After the group broke up in the early 70s, Galban slogged round the world for two decades in a backing quartet called Grupo Batey.

By 1998 Galban was semi-retired in Havana, eking out his tiny state pension with work as a piano-tuner and occasional member of the Vieja Trova Santiguera, the pioneering Cuban granddad ensemble.

Then came the knock on the door from Buena Vista. There followed starring roles on Ferrer's and Lopez's solo albums and also elevation to the pantheon of Cooder musical classics, for his guitar style and his compendious repertoire.

And because Cooder wanted to try something new after six years of Buena Vista, namely a revisiting of the atmosphere of 50s jukebox music with a small guitar-based group.

Back in the ancient studio in Havana Cooder put the line-up to Galban. The two drum kits, bass and conga, a touch of vocal chorus, Galban on his trusty Telecaster and Cooder on his usual container-load of choice stringed transport. The drums were to give horsepower, Galban was to provide the solo-guitar character.

As for the material, Galban's jukebox brain came up not only with almost all the 12 tracks on Mambo Sinuendo, but half of Ferrer's album, too. A good deal of Mambo Sinuendo consists of Cuban standards - Prado's Patricia; the Lecuona lullaby Drume Negrita; Arsenio Rodriguez's Monte Adentro; even the hoary Pineiro guaracha Echale Salsita.

Once back in LA for mixing, Cooder's nose for an antique musical find paid off. "We were in the Capitol studio and I had an old picture of Speedy West in front of a microphone, so I asked what the mic was ... and the same mic was still there. We re-recorded through it. Made the bass much better."

The result is an intelligently conceived record, loungey but funky, with enough period novelties to keep the attention. The best moments are courtesy of Galban's twang, capitalising on the Latin electric zeitgeist created by guitarists such as Marc Ribot.

Cooder thinks the album "powerful, lyrical and funny". Galban looks quietly delighted.

So what next for Cooder? "Music is fragile, people die and it's forgotten." As far as Cuba is concerned, times are not propitious.

The same Office of Foreign Assets Control that processes US-Cuban trade matters is hunting down terrorist money-transfers. Cuban musicians are finding US entry harder. But Cooder is determined. "I want to record again with Galban - he's a younger man, we can rock some more ... but I can't control some things. I don't know what the hell's gonna happen ... "

He looks lovingly at the Caddy tailfins on the table, and sighs.

- INDEPENDENT