Yet another Cuban old master? Since the advent of Buena Vista Social Club, we have witnessed a stream of venerable Latin visitors, most of them performing with such brio that we have almost begun to take them for granted. But the visit of Israel Lopez – known as “Cachao” – unquestionably qualifies as a special event. At the tender age of 88, one of the true pioneers of Cuban music makes his UK debut at the Barbican tonight as part of the La Linea festival, serving an Afro-Cuban cocktail that will include the mesmerising sound of the mambo, a style Cachao and his cellist brother, Orestes, invented back in the 1930s.

Among musicologists and Latin players, the very mention of Lopez’s name prompts blissful sighs. Yet he is less well known to the wider public. It’s no surprise that, as Andy Wood, promoter of La Linea, told me, many concert-goers, seeing the posters for Cachao’s show, confuse him with another Cuban double-bassist, Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez, a mainstay of the Buena Vista roadshow. Cachaito, now in his early seventies, has done more than enough to be acclaimed as a grand old man, yet he is, in fact, Cachao’s nephew. A mere stripling, you see.

Cachaito, along with the Buena Vista team, represents the stylish ghost of old Havana. While Cachao evokes that splendour too, he made the journey into exile long ago, leaving Havana in the early years of the Castro revolution. After years in Las Vegas, he settled in the Cuban-American colony that is Miami. A passion for gambling, it is said, came close to ruining him, and he might have eked out the rest of his days in obscurity had it not been for the unlikely intervention of the actor Andy Garcia.

Born into a Cuban family that went into exile at about the same time as the bass-player, Garcia had long been a fan, acquiring Cachao’s landmark LP, Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature, as a teen-ager. As Garcia told me by phone from LA: “I was in a store, and saw this album with a cover showing a guy holding a big contrabass like a guitar, and all these crazy guys smiling. It was a record that changed my life. As I learnt later from other percussionists, it was like a bible, showing you all you needed to know about Cuban rhythms. I went back to the store and began collecting everything he’d done.”

As an adult, Garcia often attended Cachao’s concerts, but it was not until the early 1990s that he introduced himself to his idol backstage at a show. Soon afterwards, he organised a concert to honour Cachao in Miami, and raised the money to shoot a documentary about the event. Garcia also organised recording sessions for two superb albums, Master Sessions Vols 1 and 2, a magisterial survey of Cuban music, from the stately danzonto the descarga, the rustic cadences of the guajira and, of course, the mambo. The first volume was released in 1994, which means that Cachao’s rebirth predated the Buena Vista phenomenon by a couple of years. Proof of his pivotal role comes in the fact that the title number of the Buena Vista Social Club album was actually one of his danzons. As Garcia points out, you can also hear one of the master’s bass riffs in that timeless Tito Puente standard Oye Como Va, later covered by Santana.

The acclaim for the Master Sessions at least brought Lopez back into the limelight. Since then, Garcia has continued to make recordings with him, picking up a Grammy in 2004 for ¡Ahora Si!. Cachao’s music also finds its niche on the soundtrack album accompanying Garcia’s acclaimed art-house drama The Lost City, about preCastro Havana. The veteran who had become a lost symbol is refusing to fade away.

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