"I keep hearing this word," he says, looking anxiously down at himself, as if dignity might have settled like dandruff, "but," he concludes, reassured, "I'm just the same geezer". Havana, 1 January, 1959: Fidel Castro goes on the radio and tells the Cuban people that the dictator, General Batista, has fled the night before Los Barbudos - Castro's bearded army - are taking over. On 8 January, his rag-taggle guerillas drive their Jeeps triumphantly through the streets of the capital amid euphoric cheers from the massive crowds - and isolated, desperate violence from Batista's remaining supporters. Three years later, having failed to persuade President Kennedy to support his brand of reformist politics, Castro announces that Cuba will become a Socialist Republic.

The US responds by inflicting an embargo on the country which still holds 40 years later. Among theunintentional gifts left to the island by the Americans in 1959 was the newly opened Hilton Hotel in the centre of town, where the stark neon letters on its roof were replaced by a sign declaring, "Havana Libre". Under Castro's new regime political folk singers received official endorsement, unlike their companeros, or "brothers", in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. They appeared on stage in their Che Guevara berets alongside Castro and Che himself, and sang songs which endorsed the new policies: agrarian reform, literacy. Music and revolution had gone hand-in-hand in the years of build-up to 1959 - Castro's army softened their life fighting in the mountains with the songs written by the troubadours in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. They marched with guitars as well as rifles slung over their shoulders. Today, Havana is a building site, trying to keep up with the influx of European tourists to the latest fashionable destination. Journalists, photographers and location scouts seek out the moody streets and alleys and perfectly distressed interiors - and the music.Since the unexpected success of World Circuit's Buena Vista Social Club at the US Grammy music awards a year ago, record company touts have been flocking to Cuba in search of new - or preferably old - "undiscovered" talent.

Cuba is still as synonymous with music as it was in the heady Forties and Fifties, when the mambo and cha-cha-cha drew crowds of US tourists.For the majority of Cubans, Castro's succession was welcome at first. The corruption, racism and poverty created by Batista had left a wounded and depleted country. Before long, though, Cuba's most successful musicians, with their fabulous houses and planes and lucrative contracts with the glitzy night-spots in New York and the capitals of Latin America, realised that the new order would curtail their glamorous mobile lifestyle and limit future plans. An initial trickle of musicians moving to the US became a haemorrhage which deprived the country of performers. Exit visas were stopped in 1964: those who remained behind were with the revolution - or had to plan to escape.Cuba is a small country with an extended musical family that contains several key dynasties.

Like Africa's hereditary griot families, there are certain names that are always associated with one instrument (Guillermo Rubalcaba, for example, is from a long line of pianists). The family tree of Cuba's musicians is as tangled as a mangrove's roots. Their music is now reaching an international audience, but many of the faces behind it remain less well known. A few photographers and film-makers, however, are beginning to change that.In May 1999, Wim Wenders' documentary on the extraordinary success of the Afro-Cuban All Stars and 92-year-old guitarist Compay Segundo, will be premiered in London. And this series of photographs, an exceptional record of Cuba's musicians by the Paris-based Corsican photographer Francis Giacobetti, was suggested by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Three years ago, Giacobetti photographed Fidel Castro for an interview, in which it was suggested that Marquez should produce a book about Cuba. Giacobetti narrowed the project down to the country's musicians, explaining, "Music is the language of Cuba; they don't have money or food, music is their religion."He rented a house in Havana and set up a tiny studio in the basement "The musicians came to the house with their instruments.