From Liner notes
When compiling this best-of album, selecting from more than a dozen EGREM releases, I felt such overwhelming nostalgia that I almost cried. It’s already been six years since my first trip to Cuba, and Los Van Van has always been the top band, still running at the front today.
After deciding on Van Van’s “Llegué, Llegué” as the theme song for the film Topaz, my friendship with the leader Juan Formell began. Van Van is about to mark thirty years since their formation, but Juan Formell’s musical drive has, of course, not waned even now.
The twelve songs included here are, every one, masterpieces among masterpieces, deserving the word “gems.”
What I chose were works that will go down not only in the history of Cuban music, but in the history of the world’s popular song.
I remember Havana, September 1992. On the veranda of the Hotel Riviera, looking down over the deep blue sea spreading in a 180-degree panorama, I turned the compact stereo to maximum volume and listened to Van Van for hours. The music came into my body, and I was wrapped in a pleasure like obtaining orgasm for the first time through sex. Nothing extraneous existed; even self-consciousness vanished, and there was only the music and the sea.
Since then, in live shows and in new releases, Van Van has not betrayed my expectations a single time.
There is nothing more I have to say.
The highest level of experiment and achievement in Cuban music is right here.
Ryu Murakami