Zitat des Tages von Ruben Blades:
I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.
In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.
I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.
They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.
The first time I played was in Buenos Aires - was in 1983. The dictatorship was in position.
Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69.
Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.
The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city.
A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you.
We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.
I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.
So that when I came to New York again, it was, I'm not too sure right now, but it was '74 or '75. I went to Miami in '74 and then I came to New York, I think, at the end of '74.
My mother never finished elementary school. My father didn't, and that was a reality for many of us.
There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.
So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.
So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.
People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.
So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime.
I didn't do drugs, I never did do drugs. Never. I don't have any story of drugs, you know, to speak of. Never did drugs, never was interested in drugs and then I wasn't interested in the people around the drugs.
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.
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.
Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.
But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.
What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.
You know, it was uncomfortable doing the same thing. I don't like a rut.
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 a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.
I think in New York we had respect and we would pretty much fill up the places where we went, but I never got the sense that we really were Number 1 here in New York among the Latin crowds.
It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.
So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.
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.
I don't accept ideologies that are not a product of consensus. I don't have an ideology, but I do have a sense of what's right and what's wrong.
I'm planning to retire from salsa. I'm planning to do a farewell tour.
Tortured characters are, I think, an actor's dream.
I collected the 'Walking Dead' comics.
