Rubén Blades: “What Willie Colón and I did together was something unrepeatable” | Culture | EUROtoday

Ruben Blades (Panama, 77 years previous) assures that he has a significant precedence: “Knowing how to manage time.” At this level in his existence, he says, he has many issues left to do and most of them are outdoors of music. “There are things that interest me a lot and that people don’t know about. For example, archaeology. Now, in Panama they have found a pre-Columbian tomb made of gold and that is superior to those made by the Mayans or the Aztecs. That suggests to me that Panama was a great religious center and it is very interesting to know it,” explains this musician, emblem of salsa and one of many nice pioneers of Latin music of the twentieth century.

Versatile and a terrific conversationalist, Blades, who can be an actor – he participated within the collection Fear the Walking Dead– and political activist, attends EL PAÍS’ video name from New York, the town the place he has a residence. And, in lower than 5 minutes of discuss, he makes it clear that his factor is to benefit from the time as a result of he shows all the pieces he has executed recently. He has participated within the movie Gabacho Championdirected by Jonás Cuarón; He has written a guide with biographical and journalistic notes that will likely be revealed in 2027; and in the summertime he’ll embark on a world tour that can deliver him to Spain in July to cities corresponding to Seville, Vitoria, Valencia, Barcelona, ​​Cartagena, Huesca and Madrid. “We have a lot of repertoire and that is always better because I like to play long. Every tour, it becomes more difficult for me to know what I am going to play. In addition, the band is much better now than 14 years ago when we started,” he says.

However, the musician himself hints that this tour could possibly be the final or the penultimate, relying on how his physique responds. “There comes a time for all of us when there is a slump, including Messi,” he factors out. But, removed from desirous about an finish, take into consideration different beginnings when you find yourself already an octogenarian. “When I called my dad, I asked him: ‘What are you up to?’ And he answered: ‘Well, I’m bored.’ I don’t want that for myself at this age,” he confesses. “The issue is knowing where you put your focus. If you have spent your whole life only with music, perhaps, if you leave the stage, you disappear and we all have a dose of vanity to not want to disappear.” Therefore, for him, in contrast to maybe Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen or Van Morrison, leaving the stage shouldn’t be an issue: “I’m very busy with other things.”

In the center of the interview, he interrupts the telephone and he agrees with him. She is his spouse from Panama. The musician apologizes, picks up his cellphone and talks to his spouse in entrance of the digicam with the hands-free system, who reminds him that he has an appointment on Saturday. Blades, the busy man, has plans to “not waste anything.” Among all of them, he even plans to return to politics after his time as Minister of Tourism of Panama with the Government of Martín Torrijos between 2004 and 2009. “For me, politics is an act of self-defense. Fascists and communists insult me, they hit me from both sides. And, despite that, I have much more credibility than the corrupt politicians in my country. Nobody can call me a thief.” And he says: “Knowledge is useless if you don’t share it.”

If he can boast of any information, it’s musical information. In 2023, he received his final massive award, Best Latin Pop Album on the Grammys for Pasieros. “We achieved it with salsa. That was not planned because we were competing with the reggaeton artists,” he confesses with a smile. “We are the only band that can go from sextet to big band, that is, going from six to twenty people. We are the representatives of salsa.” More than a representative, we can say that he is its best ambassador, the composer and singer who made history with his albums on Fania Records, the legendary house of salsa in New York. Founded in 1964 by the Italian-American lawyer Jerry Masucci and the Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco, Fania was born in the Latin neighborhoods of the Bronx and Spanish Harlem and, through the fabulous mix of Cuban son, mambo, guaracha, bugaboo and jazz, turned the Caribbean migrant experience in New York into a global musical phenomenon thanks to names like Héctor Lavoe, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz or Ismael Miranda. Blades arrived in the Bronx in the early seventies and, at first, worked stamping postage stamps in offices until percussionist Ray Barreto, another of the all-star from Fania, auditioned him and hired him for his orchestra. It was the opportunity for the smart boy in the class. He quickly distinguished himself as a composer with an instinct to capture the troubles of the street, giving everyday life a poetic halo. He also knew how to associate: he teamed up with trombonist Willie Colón and together they recorded influential and unbeatable works such as Sowing o Songs from the boring lot.

After forming one of the most vital and fascinating partnerships in Latin music, he and Colón ended up like the rosary of the dawn. They went to court over copyright issues. For salsa, their breakup was like that of Lennon and McCartney. There was no public reconciliation between them and Columbus died on February 21. “The last time we spoke was at a mutual friend’s wake in New York,” Blades says. “We had not spoken for the reason that trials. We hugged one another. People had been scared at first as a result of they thought we’d hit one another. But we each had a typical background and we each revered one another. I’m not excellent nor was he. I all the time defended what was mine whereas sustaining respect for him. I acknowledge that his dying was a shock. I did not count on it. I knew he had well being issues, nevertheless it was a shock. It hit me very shut, actually. What we did collectively was one thing unrepeatable. I all the time admired him and regardless of the regrets.”

Saying the identify of Rubén Blades is, subsequently, referring to a storyteller the ultimate in Latin music. In 2021, he was acknowledged as Person of the Year by the Latin Grammys. At that ceremony, Puerto Rican Residente, one in all his greatest admirers, learn a speech through which he mentioned: “Because neither Metropolis nor Gotham City will be bigger than that world you created, Hispania. Because your stories are about people who exist, real people, without magical superpowers. People who bleed to death if they are shot.” Regarding his affect, Blades confesses that one of many issues he nonetheless must do in music is to create “a map and a story of his fiction inspired by the reality called Hispania”, within the fashion of what William Faulker did with the American South or his buddy García Márquez with Macondo. “I am making connections between my songs to determine the relationships of the universe created in them. For example, what connection is there between the drunk in ‘Pedro Navaja’ with the drunk who drives the car in ‘Decisiones’? Or between the prostitute in ‘Pedro Navaja’ and the one in ‘Tartamudo’? They were all part of the same territory throughout my work. I still have not managed to find out where the magician Isaías, the great narrator of my work, comes from.”

Popular imagery and in addition symbols are cited in his intensive work. When Bad Bunny dazzled on the Super Bowl along with his Latin odyssey in protection of America past the United States, Blades himself got here to thoughts for a lot of, champion of this worldwide Latin trigger since its beginnings and exemplified within the track ‘Plásico’. “Bad Bunny did the same thing that Willie Colón and I did. Only he added the flags of the United States and Canada,” he explains. “Subliminally, what it says is that there is strength in unity.” And what do you consider Bad Bunny, now the undisputed king of Latin music? “He tries to do something for his community, for his country. That goes beyond whether he sings well or badly. Furthermore, I met his parents and they are good people and good people make good people.”

A group that, for the reason that re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, has as soon as once more been within the eye of the hurricane by means of ICE raids in a number of cities within the nation. “Every day there is new indignation. Trump’s capacity for stupidity has no limit. The most dangerous thing is the number of people who support him. Because Trump is a sick narcissist, with obvious mental problems,” says a musician who has by no means held his tongue. “All artists are human beings. And when I give my opinion, I don’t do it as an artist, but as a human being. At my age, I no longer care about anything.”

It is a good suggestion to right him in his personal phrases: it is vital for him to know how you can handle his time. And, on this sense, he leaves a closing reflection: managing it effectively sufficient to spend so much of time along with his buddies from his early youth in Panama, these with whom he “talks shit, insults each other, plays dominoes and drinks, those who do not argue with me whether the earth is flat and who have also read Jules Verne and know who Albert Camus is.” And he says: “The best investment I made in my life was my friends.”