Havana D'Primera: Pueblo Griffo

Author: Uroš Švagan (DJ Lokafun)

​Havana D'Primera and his majesty Alexander Abreu have woven twelve comfortable blankets for us in a new bundle for the upcoming winter. When we wrap ourselves, the blankets will reach deep into our hearts and fill our estranged souls, longing for the warmth and the tenderness of their natural and eternally fresh materials, carefully harvested and ginned in Cuba and its neighbouring countries.

The twelve new blankets may seem somewhat predictable to the long-time Havana D'Primera enthusiasts, but they always evoke bursts of emotions, as only a few competitors can. If we anticipated more surprises, we can only acknowledge our own sense of entitlement and blame our tendency to be spoiled. Havana D'Primera has a knack for dosing them perfectly, though we only come to appreciate them later. Since the new blankets are never exactly what we wanted, the devoted fans of the brand
often feel a slight disappointment at first glance.

However, we eventually realize that the new bundle offers precisely what we needed. As Steve Jobs emphasized, it's not the customer's job to know what he wants. The true essence of the new Havana D'Primera blankets is revealed only when they settle in a bit. Like sneakers that are initially stiff, but then gradually adapt to our sensitive feet. Havana D'Primera blankets are not only durable but also offer lasting freshness. Their diversity and quality reveal themselves in the intricate details we keep uncovering every time we wrap ourselves in their warmth.

El Rey de la Trompeta en Cuba knows how to carefully blend Cuban with the non-Cuban ingredients, well enough to remain interesting, but without offending anyone too much. In previous collections, the King sourced his materials from the Dominican Republic. This time however, there's no hint of funkachata or merengue. If anyone hoped the King would sail off to some other neighboring island, and perhaps even venture to Jamaica, he favored embarking on journeys to destinations where the crowds would be more easily seduced and converted. After all, his adventure into Africa a few years ago quickly faded into obscurity. The target customer segment must remain among Latin and latinophile butt twisters, as they are the most receptive to the vibrations offered by Caribbean fibers.

While the Maria Magdalena blanket cautiously introduces imitations of salsaton and reparto, A Belen Le Toca Ahora offers  clumsily repetitive salsa patterns. Although Puerto Rican salsa philanthropist Gilberto Santa Rosa did help stitch the Cu-Pr blanket, it still evokes very Cuban feelings. A successful transformation? Judge for yourself. The promotional advertisement for the Cu-Pr blanket has been available on YouTube for some time now, while the new one is just being shot for the Secuestro blanket, which will kidnap you and awaken the Stockholm syndrome within you.

The Bicho Malo blanket carries sensations closer to the Peruvian brand Mayimbe, as it gets completely stuck in the middle of wrapping us into sadness – stops - and then - just as we thought the depth of our despair has been reached, it transitions into the biblical genesis of repetative mountainous melancholy. But any great collection must offer a purposeful blanket for confronting a wide range of emotions.

Perhaps the biggest departure from predictability comes at the beginning of La Chica Del Escenario, with its classic doo-wop chord progression and singing style, which transports us back to the 1950s. It combines the incompatible, using clichés to achieve innovation, which has always characterized at least one blanket from the Havana D'Primera collections. When you first wrap yourself into it, you might feel a touch of Wayne Cochran's Last Kiss, perhaps better known in Pearl Jam's rendition. It wouldn't be surprising if Alexander borrowed patterns intentionally, as the Last Kiss was said to have resonated better in the Latin world in its original version in the 1960s. In this almost modernized imitation, Alexander catcallingly whistles to a girl on stage with a childlike springtime infatuation, bringing a playful touch to the world of his blankets. 

When we squeeze the new blankets to our cheeks and bring them closer to our ears, they serve us the voices of spirits from their past, just like the seashells do. They echo relaxed exclamations, onomatopoeias, buzzing, whinnying, rumbling, laughter, whistling, and other vibrations of the Cuban King of the trumpet. You can feel that he is truly pushing the boundaries to successfully inject his own pleasures into you - under his blankets - through his outpourings - aiming to slowly and skillfully prepare you for the purest form of collective orgasm. Havana D'Primera blankets continue to offer a magical sophistication that strives to be populist just enough to carry the fruits of his majesty's outpourings globally to the ends of the Earth and beyond.

As a logical continuation of the previous bundle, Pueblo Griffo could as well have been named Cantor del Pueblo Griffo. Reportedly, the King had been working on it long ago while preparing the previous bundle. The King Alexander distributed the new bundle worldwide on his 47th birthday, naming it after the neighborhood in Cienfuegos where he grew up.

The main actors of the Havana D'Primera brand are temporarily leaving Cuba and saying "Sayonara, goodbye my loff". At the end of September, they will be showcasing their blankets across Europe, and they might even make a stop somewhere near you.

But what about the other blankets from the bundle? Well, they might even be better than those explicitly mentioned in this article, but the reader's attention has now subsided, wondering "Why did I just walk over this mambo jumbo, when i could just read the final summary?". And the summary goes like: »If you're a timba lover, you'll enjoy it. If you're not, then become one – what are you waiting for?!"