"Buenos Hermanos" is yet another great album of Cuban music. But it's worth noting some of the other reasons why this album is such an achievement.

As most people now know, Ibrahim Ferrer had quit music and was selling lottery tickets and shining shoes when Juan de Marcos Gonzalez implored him to sing for Ry Cooder and Nick Gold, who at that time were struggling to find the right voice for the boleros on "Buena Vista Social Club." This invitation was a painfully ironic one for the singer. Repeatedly throughout his career, various bandmates had told him that his voice was no good for boleros, although that was the style he wanted to sing above all others. Other insults that soured Ferrer's aspirations include his name being removed from his 1955 hit record, "El Platanar de Bartolo" when it was released outside Cuba. And after another of his songs, "La Historia de Benetin," became popular on Cuban television, his colleagues told him it was rubbish. "That disappointment marked me forever," he recently told an interviewer. "After that I lost my enthusiasm for music."

"Buenos Hermanos," like "Mambo Sinuendo," or bassist Cachaito Lopez' 2001 "Cachaito," is no resurrection of past glory. Yes, the music is warm, playful and romantic, just as all the Buena Vista albums have been and, yes, many of the tunes have been ripening on the island for decades. But in Cooder's reckoning, "This record is supposed to bring Ibrahim down off the elegant nightclub stage and have him get right in your face . . . "