Abstract
I take the image of the crossroads first as a way of elucidating the approach Wim Wenders takes to making films and Ry Cooder to making music, and to the implicit politics that can be derived from their practice. I then look at Paris, Texas as a crossroads film to examine how the thematic and formal properties of the film can throw light on the nature of Cooder’s and Wenders’s collaboration on it. This is then used as a base from which to launch an attempt to demolish once and for all the widely held view that Buena Vista Social Club was an example of cultural imperialism.
Highlights
Paris, Texas and Buena Vista Social Club are what might be called crossroads movies, the first because of the meeting of Europe and the United States implied in everything from the title on, and the second through the implications of a Cuban community centre whose name meshes Spanish with English
Ry Cooder’s relationship with the blues is just as formative: he listened to it as well as folk music as a child in a home where both were associated with left politics, and first learnt guitar by listening to records of this music.[4]
Latin/o American music could begin its preface as follows: As the twentieth century drew to a close, a small band of elderly Cuban musicians, known collectively as the Buena Vista Social Club, was playing to sold-out concert halls throughout the world, selling hundreds of thousands of compact discs, and starring, with Ry Cooder, in an awardwinning documentary by Wim Wenders
Summary
Texas and Buena Vista Social Club are what might be called crossroads movies, the first because of the meeting of Europe and the United States implied in everything from the title on, and the second through the implications of a Cuban community centre whose name meshes Spanish with English.
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