Everyone knows “La Bamba,” the classic feel-good Ritchie Valens song from 1958 which merely served to tease the talent of the 17-year-old artist who tragically died less than a year later in the plane crash (with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper) that became known as “the day the music died.”

The song was Valens’ (born Richard Valenzuela) reluctant rock and roll take on a Mexican folk song (and uniquely at the time sung in Spanish), which was memorably revisited with an even better version by Los Lobos for the 1987 film biopic “La Bamba.” Valens’ version was top 40, Los Lobos’ (with its irrepressible outro), No. 1.

It’s fitting then that this typically terrific treatment of the song by Playing for Change features Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas leading the international collective of players, spread from the Congo to Cuba and, naturally, Veracruz, Mexico, from whence the song originated, though probably not played on a harp as it is here by master Alberto Manuel de la Rosa. Also featured is Argentinian Latin music icon André Calamaro.

Sadly, Valens wasn’t able to stay around long enough to see what his song would become; but he can rest knowing that the music didn’t die.