Iván Fariñas & Viento Solar ‎– Bloomer Plástico LP

Guitarist and vocalist Iván Fariñas de Armas is the “Grandfather” of Cuban rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, you heard right, Cuban rock ‘n’ roll has an ‘abuelo’ — maybe you didn’t know there even was such a thing as ‘el rock cubano’ — but there is. Even if he’s not a household name, Iván Fariñas should be, as he’s extremely talented and is arguably the oldest still practicing rockero from behind The Mango Curtain, since he started in the 1950s. He claims to have written and recorded the first Cuban blues-rock tune in English — over 40 years ago. Fariñas founded his current group Viento Solar (Solar Wind) in 1975 and was not able to record his music officially until the late 1990s. Though his recordings are known somewhat in Europe and South America, his official physical releases are not distributed beyond Cuba and he remains undiscovered in the United States. Now for the first time outside of Cuba, Fariñas' intriguing life story and a selection of recordings of his long-lived band Viento Solar wil