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T has been more than 20 fat, lean, and freaky years since Buena Vista Social Club healed us with its songs. Ay, wait, cariño. My son Cuba turns a blooming two years old today. Cute as his dad, naughty as “mohmee!”

Cuba was born to this sad, blue mother Earth still kept somewhat sane with slivers of optimistic ebullience and soppy tales of romance. Perhaps he was percussioned into this world to the sound of the island’s heartsnatching music, music known for its game of dare and embrace: a sonic blend of the island’s traditional changui, Yoruba’s religious abakua, son, merengue, soukos and salsa. A musical mélange the colour of midnight indigo.

My late granny was right. Every creation needs its sound, every evolutionary phase its poets and every revolution its soundtrack. Every birth its screams.

Even the belligerent, Thatcherera, Toried, pilloried and soultortured British chavs listened to pugnacious white-boy blues such as the Stones’ Exile on Main St. and Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir on their mama’s stereos before creating that liberating noise called punk.

But this is not one of my beloved raw-kin-roll stories. This is the story of how a rag-tag band of Latino anciano abuelos stole my heart and might unwittingly have inspired life: birth and rebirth.

It is also a story about stories. About a mystical revival tent I entered through the hypnotic