A curious musical phenomenon took place in 1999, due mostly to the diligent efforts of the taste-making guitarist Ry Cooder. Along with the German filmmaker Wim Wenders and World Circuit producer Nick Gold, Mr. Cooder traveled to Havana, Cuba, and documented a clutch of historic musicians who had been all but lost in the fog of Castro’s Cuba.

Called the Buena Vista Social Club, septuagenarian and octogenarian players such as Rubén González, Arturo Sandoval, and Compay Segundo, long thought lost to time, experienced a renaissance of their music, which they had been plying in clubs and on street corners for five decades. With the support of their new benefactors, they toured the world, packed Carnegie Hall, and resuscitated their dormant careers.

Before long, producers were scouring Cuba for other lost gems, and extraordinary examples of Cuban music gradually came to light, such as the sublime 1979 superstar session, “Estrellas de Areito,” and “Bossa Cubana,” a collection of singles by a Western-styled vocal group called Los Zafiros.

The story of this revered Cold War casualty is told in a new documentary called “Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time,” which was released this week on DVD. The packaging goes to great lengths to paint the group as “the Beatles of Cuba,” which is only partly true (the well-worn anecdote about the Beatles catching a Los Zafiros performance at a heralded Paris concert was actually invented by a group member in the final stages of illness).

But the rise of Los Zafiros did parallel that of the Fab Four, albeit on a smaller scale. With the ascent of television, the group drew Cuba’s youth toward its light in the mid-1960s with glittering group harmonies, synched dance steps, and matinee idol visages. The American origins of Los Zafiros’ music (Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and The Flamingos) harkened back to the golden vocal groups of the ’50s and early ’60s, and related to the hometown crowds with injections of calypso and bossa nova throughout.

Counter-tenor Ignacio Elejalde, falsetto Miguelito Cancio, Kike Morúa, “El Chino” Hernandez, and guitarist Manuel Galbán (along with a battery of congas, bongos, and other percussion) most emulated the Beatles in the way they melded disparate musical influences into a new pop formula, the sum more profound than the parts.

Though Lorenzo DeStefano’s film is a bit heavy-handed in an opening montage featuring President Kennedy, atomic bombs, and moon landings, politics are ultimately of little import once the story becomes immersed in these sublime slices of teenage pop. Songs such as the percolating “Bossa Cubana,” the dreamy “La Luna en tu Mirada,” and the heartrending “Mi Amor, Perdóname” resound regardless of the language barrier or the political upheavals of the era.

Aside from electric archival television footage of the group in action, “Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time” features family members and Cuban entertainers reminiscing about the band’s meteoric rise. Though Los Zafiros gained fame in revolutionary Cuba by performing a distinctly American style of music, their path to stardom was nevertheless unimpeded by politics. Indeed, they were one of Fidel Castro’s favorite groups, and toured the world as Cuban icons.

Tragically, the film reveals yet another parallel to the Beatles, in that only two of Los Zafiros, Messrs. Cancio and Galbán, are alive today to tell the story. The latter was a member of Buena Vista Social Club and also cut a loungy mambo guitar duet alum with Mr. Cooder (2003’s “Mambo Siguendo”). In one stirring sequence of the film, Mr. Cancio pays a visit to Pupi, the brother of El Chino, who, having not seen Mr. Cancio in 21 years, delivers a stirring solo on violin as tribute to the group. As the memories of the past well up within him, he collapses in tears, the two men embracing.

Almost half a century later, the relevance of Los Zafiros has not abated in their homeland. A Florida radio station invites listeners to call in and discuss the group’s enduring greatness, while footage in the film shows Los Neuvos Zafiros (a group created in the late’80s by El Chino) lovingly playing the old songs on the modern streets of Havana. As the next generation harmonizes on these classics of Cuban pop, a crowd of oldtimers and young children sings along, knowing every word.