Quotes By 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.

It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985.

But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.

And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day.

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.

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.

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.

In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.

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.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.

A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you.

I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.

Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.

Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69.

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 I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.

It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.

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.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here.

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.

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.

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.

Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.

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.