Buena Vista Orchestra Makes a Stirring Dallas Debut at Majestic Theatre

The word “preservation” can connote a stasis of sorts — taking something and putting it under wraps, away from harm, so that future generations might appreciate it.

However, to be immersed in the colorful, revivifying type of preservation practiced by the Buena Vista Orchestra is to understand the value of such an exercise: These men and women make music that might otherwise drift to the wayside, lifting up a people, a genre and its multitude of virtues so that a roomful of people can sway and sing and clap their hands in blissful appreciation.

So it was Thursday night at the Majestic Theatre, an audience taking in what, from all available evidence, was the first time any musicians associated with the culture-shifting Buena Vista Social Club project had performed in Dallas. (The initial ensemble, which toured the globe, released an album and was the subject of an acclaimed documentary, disbanded in 2015.)

Multiple offshoots, like so many seedlings carved from the original tree, have sprouted in the decade since its dissolution — one of them, Orquestra Buena Vista Social Club, performed at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall in 2013, but it appears no other affiliated groups have passed through North Texas to date.

Buena Vista Orchestra, led by Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos, the original bandleader, trombonist and arranger for BVSC, was a lively octet, anchored by three members of that first group: Fabian Garcia on stand-up bass (perched on a stool most of the evening, he seemed dwarfed by his instrument); pianist Emilio Senon Morales Ruiz, whose fleet-fingered playing was a sparkling thread throughout; and percussionist “Betun” Luis Mariano Valiente Marin, who kept a steady, rolling beat on congas and bongo. The BVSO was rounded out by Ramos’ daughter, Lorena Lazara Ramos Diaz (also on trombone), vocalists Aldo Isidro Miranda Alvarez and Geidi Chapman, percussionist Antonio Remigio Rubio Borayo and trumpeter-vocalist Rogelio Ricardo Oliva Orelly.

For roughly 100 minutes, the BVSO, standing on a stage holding only instruments and microphones, deployed a mix of instrumentals, standards and originals — all in Spanish; trace amounts of English were heard from the stage Thursday — to steadily pry audience members loose from their plush seats. As the night built to its climax, more and more individuals, particularly along the left side of the theater, began dancing in the aisle, swaying to the beat, lost in the bliss of undulating rhythms.

Indeed, movement was inescapable Thursday, as Ramos would break from his languid, shuffling dance to wave his hands, pick up his trombone or point and smile at his collaborators or at the audience before him. Only the back row of musicians (Ruiz, Garcia, Marin and Borayo) were largely stationary, while the front row — everyone else — danced, shook, shimmied and clapped.

Whether a BVSC original such as “El Cuarto de Tula,” a brief instrumental rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Chapman’s luminous reading of “Besame Mucho” or the rousing take on Celia Cruz’s “Azucar, Azucar,” the BVSO rarely let the night grow too contemplative. Chapman and Alvarez traded knockout moments — her voice full of smoke and hurt and soul; his voice a glittering blade, carving up the air, its corners as sharp as his suit — bolstered by the immensely skilled musicians behind them, unfurling blasts of brass, stabs of piano, the rattle of maracas and the rough thump of hand percussion.

Buena Vista, Buen Sonido

But for as much as the night underscored the critical need for art like this to be heard and seen and felt, the Buena Vista Orchestra also drove home the immense value of stepping outside the familiar. When you travel, you dislodge yourself from your everyday. In doing so, your aperture widens, you take in more of the world and expand your sense of humanity.

And when the world comes to your doorstep, as it did Thursday, it can be just as mind-altering as boarding a plane or a boat or a bus to somewhere else.

The showcase of Cuban music proudly performed with brio on the Majestic Theatre stage by men and women of Cuban ancestry was utterly captivating in its beauty and power. The kind of night vibrating with the feeling of being alive: The slap of a bongo, flick of a piano key or strike of a timbale resonating like the beat of your own heart.