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

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

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.
Ruben Blades

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

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

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.
Ruben Blades

I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.
Ruben Blades

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.
Ruben Blades

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.
Ruben Blades

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


I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.
Ruben Blades

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.
Ruben Blades