Ruben Blades
Ruben Blades
Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna, known professionally as Rubén Blades, is a Panamanian singer, songwriter, actor, musician, activist, and politician, performing musically most often in the Afro-Cuban, salsa, and Latin jazz genres. As a songwriter, Blades brought the lyrical sophistication of Central American nueva canción and Cuban nueva trova as well as experimental tempos and politically inspired Nuyorican salsa to his music, creating "thinking persons'dance music"...
NationalityPanamanian
ProfessionWorld Music Singer
Date of Birth16 July 1948
CityPanama City, Panama
CountryPanama
So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.
There was a lot of stuff happening in Havana that was being heard and appreciated by New Orleans musicians because of this situation. And vice versa.
Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.
What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another.
There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.
And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez.
It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.
They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.
But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.
Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.
Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models.
I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.
What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.
So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with.