Guitarist Ry Cooder has been mining his Buena Vista Social Club project for six years — long enough that the rich mother lode of dormant Cuban talent he’s been reviving could be assumed to have run out. After all, between the breakthrough 1997 release Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch) and follow-up solo albums and tours by the island nation’s Sinatra, Ibrahím Ferrer, the feverishly swinging bassist Orlando "Cachaito" López, folk guitarist Eliades Ochoa, and pianist Rubén González, Cooder is already responsible for some of the most joyful, emotional music to be filtered through a major label’s channels in ages. But his latest collaboration from the studios of Havana unveils a guitarist/organist/composer of such astonishing range, depth, and invention that it’s the Social Club’s boldest and most accessible sequel.

The just-released Mambo Sinuendo (Perro Verde/Nonesuch) finds the roots-music-devouring six-stringer joining up with Manuel Galbán, who made his reputation in Castro-era Cuba as the arranger and guitarist of Los Zafiros, once the country’s most popular vocal group. The disc is nearly all instrumentals, so that there’s no language barrier. And its dozen tunes are bright, funny, rhythmically dynamic, and so full of strong major- and minor-key melodies that they speak directly to fans of just about any music. Imagine the Latin charms of the Social Club matched to the twangy definition and energy of early rocker Duane Eddy, with the sly sonic invention of lounge king Juan García Esquivel. Plus, the work of Cooder and Galbán is swinging and jazz-savvy, even while cloaked in mysterious reverb like great lost Ennio Morricone spaghetti-western tracks.

Did I forget to mention the beauty? Galbán’s arrangement of Billy Stewart’s 1954 pop chestnut "Secret Love" is flat-out heart-melting. His and Cooder’s sweet-toned guitars twine and chime at the pace of soft breathing. The slowly played chords yield every rich tone in their harmonic range thanks to thoughtful vintage amplification. The guitarists’ palms stroke whammy bars with the gentle pulse of relaxed heartbeats to bend and shape their notes, and the melodies trickle along with the purity of mountain-spring water. Although Galbán plays most of the melodies, including the chirping, madcap Farfisa line of "Caballo Viejo," Cooder supplies one of his richest slide performances on "Bolero Sonámbulo," slipping glass over steel strings for a warm, slightly phlegm-throated guitar sound that’s slow, dreamy, and surreal enough to fit the tune’s title.

Right from the start, in the pattering drums and chiseled low guitar notes of "Drume Negrita," which yield to a gloriously near-vocal melody that Galbán works an octave above Cooder’s deep strings and Hawaiian slide, it’s obvious this is a special set. Cooder has recorded with such masterful guitarists as Mali’s Ali Farka Toure and Hawaii’s slack-key master Gabby Pahinui, but the immediacy and joy of this music tumbles out. If there’s such a thing as a feel-good album, Mambo Sinuendo is it.

Cooder tracked down Galbán, who had been playing infrequently since he left Los Zafiros in 1972, to perform on Ibrahím Ferrer’s first solo CD. Defying the politics of 1960s Cuba, Los Zafiros had built an unpredictable fusion of their nation’s folk tradition with American rock and roll and playful, futurist sonics supplied by vibes, reverb, and the economical use of voices as a kind of impressionist horn section, à la Morricone and Esquivel. The result could be called space-age mambo rock. By the time Cooder and Galbán met, Galbán had settled into playing traditional acoustic music and didn’t own an amplifier.

That’s impossible to tell anywhere on this album. His electric playing is as fluid and sure as Cooder’s. They share the same light but precise touch, restraint working in the service of cocksure attitude. They are "Los Twangueros" as they perform on a number with that name like a pair of seasoned Old West gunfighters who meet at a desert waterhole and decide to see who can put the most holes through a tossed silver dollar. Working over a choppy bed of hand drums — batas, typically used in Santería rituals — that play in a slightly lurching rhythm, Cooder and Galbán paste down an effortlessly clean and tuneful 12-bar melody that’s an oasis amid the rhythmic percolation.

Indeed, the unhurried pace and vivid sonic colors of Mambo Sinuendo make the disc an escape from modern life’s rattling rhythms, defining Cooder and Galbán as makers and masters of their own happy and rational musical universe. And for a dozen appealing numbers, we’re invited to join them.