National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Even before Eliades Ochoa made his now famous CD with the Buena Vista Social Club, he was already considered to be "The Lion of Santiago," the greatest musician in the Casa de la Trova, where he would sit down in front of the small audience and sing words of this Puerto Rican plena about the people who run out of the zoo once they hear that the lion is loose.

It took the Buena Vista phenomenon to win Eliades the recognition that he deserves, although his body of work reveals the enormous talent that he has as a guitarist and singer, with or without the more recent international fame. —Courtesy Calabash Music