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
It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here.
You know, it was uncomfortable doing the same thing. I don't like a rut.
I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.
So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.
And, we watched the Beatles one week after they showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show because of the U.S. Southern Command TV network.
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.
It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985.
They had seen me performing in Panama, but in Panama I had to quit performing because teachers in the national university were against my performing.
This is important to clarify, because a lot of people don't understand that I came in '69 and then went back to Panama to finish school.
In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.
The first time I came to New York was 1969. I came because the university, the National University of Panama, had been closed by the military.
We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.
I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.
And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day.