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I'm a musician that tries to prepare himself intellectually and psychologically
for any task that may come along,
and so I listen to everything, everything.
I'm familiar with most reggaeton albums, I know a lot of jazz,
but I'm 'salsero', I'm 'salsero' from head to toe.
My grandfather was a guitarist and 'tercero', my mom would sing with my aunt and uncle,
who was also a 'tercero', a very, very talented one.
So I grew up in a musical family.
But they weren't trained musicians.
The first one who had the opportunity of going to school and to develop this academically was me.
Up until today...
Since I was a kid, from an early age, I oriented myself towards singing.
Until I started doing trumpet at age 10.
I studied at a small conservatory in the city of Cienfuegos.
The first four years, my musical studies were intense, and it was the foundation, the base of everything that comes out today.
Everything else I did with my friends on the street, going out on 'comparsas' [street bands].
I would often go on comparsa, playing the trumpet.
This helped me a lot too, because it inoculated me the essence of warmth,
and the strength of traditional Cuban salsa rhythms, the truth and the grip of it,
the resistance required to be on stage for a very long time.
Getting to Havana, I studied at the Upper School of Arts in 1994,
and one of my colleagues had a job lined up with a salsero that had become a reference,
Manuel Gonzá***, 'Manolín', 'El Médico de la Salsa'.
I worked back then with a fledging orchestra, and...we became friends, instant friends, right?
Because I had been in Havana for only 6 days, and for a country boy, to arrive in Havana...
You look around you, and you feel that the world's going to swallow you.
Around that time, he was going to perform here, in Havana.
So he invited me, and by pure coincidence, that evening
one of the trumpet players had a problem and did not show up.
So that night I played for the first time.
And that's how, in approximately 20 days after arriving in Havana in 1994
I began working in Paulo FG's orchestra, where I stayed 7 years,
and it was one of the greatest schools that I've had up until today.
In 2004, I went to live in Denmark.
I went back to Havana in 2008, and, well, I decided to create the group Havana d'Primera.
It was always a project that involved 15 people, 15 musicians onstage...
A lot of people told me that it was too many people, but I wanted have a functional orchestra.
A complete format...
And, well, 5 years later, it's even stronger.
Circuits are closing up and things are being settled
in order for the project to keep growing.
This is definitely timba. That's a fact, right?
"Cubanness" comes out of our pores, but with other ingredients.
I mean, it is fused with jazz, with Caribbean music,
it has to do with calypso, that kind of thing.
It's a kind of music made for the people.
Another ingredient in that mix is poetry.
But not of the very far-fetched kind.
You can say that that leaf is green, and that phrase has poetry.
It just depends on how you serve it, right?
This is the last of Havana d'Primera's ingredients: a mix of poetry and rumba,
and with Cuban music, and the culture that emanates from music.
Almost everything I write is based on actual facts.
These are things that have happened. and I've felt the need to put them down on paper.
Sometimes I wake up at 5 a.m. with a new idea,
and I'm not going to wake up at that time...
I have the telephone next to me, I turn on the recorder, I sing, and then I put it aside.
These are flashes that come to you, and then, if you don't record it,
if you don't write it, if you don't save it, then you forget it.
And that's what I do, in that manner.
For example, 'Carita de pasaporte', a track that has traveled around the world
in very little time, very, very little time.
It came out onstage, just like that.
And those are experiences that only happen with Cuban music.