World Music Legends

There aren’t many people who’ve expanded a musical genre, enjoyed a successful acting career, gained an advanced degree in international law, and run for the presidency of their homeland. But there is one, and his name is Rubén Blades.

          As a salsero, first with Ray Barretto then Willie Colón—two of salsa’s most glittering stars—he made his name as a stunning singer and writer, penning songs like the gritty “Pedro Navaja,” which became the biggest-selling single in salsa history. But his talent truly began to shine in the 1980s, after branching out on his own, and making a series of records that used salsa as a musical base, but took ideas from rock, reggae and elsewhere, bringing Blades a whole new, largely Anglo, audience that took to his very political lyrics, even if they were in Spanish. Mixing salsa with the more thoughtful ideals of the nueva cancion movement that had become a force in Latin music, he created something quite profound and influential.

          “I expanded the music’s base with my lyrics,” Blades said proudly. “I drew more people into the mix who were willing to think as well as move their bodies.”

          That would have been enough of a lasting achievement, even if it came while the concept of world music was still a very small speck on a very large map. But Blades has gone much further, even running for President of his native Panama in 1994, although he’d lived in the U.S. for two decades. It was simply his protest, a way of speaking out against a repressive regime. As he explained, “At no moment did I think I was going to become president or anything of the sort, but if I would have been, it would not have been through a desire for power. What we attempted was to bring to the fore the existence of an important sector of the Panamanian population that disagrees and cannot identify with the policies applied to them. My political campaign fully achieved that purpose.”

          It was symbolic, it was quixotic. But romance has always been part of the Latin heart, and Blades has always worn his heart very proudly on his sleeve in every aspect of his life. And, in fact, he finished second.

          For a brief moment he even managed to become the darling of the intellectual white rock elite, working with artists such as Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and Sting on 1988’s Nothing But The Truth, his first English language recording. But thankfully, rather than getting drawn into that circle, he’s remained very much his own man.

But being his own man has perhaps been the defining maxim of Blades’ life. After witnessing American policy in Panama as a child, he chose to sing only in Spanish for many years as a political gesture, although he was fully bilingual (you don’t get through a Master’s program at Harvard otherwise) and chose to make his home in the U.S. after earning his law degree in Panama. A paradox, perhaps, but then we’re all a mass of contradictions.

And throughout the years he’s continued to explore and expand the possibilities of salsa, taking it into realms far beyond those he helped steer it to even 20 years ago. His recent album, Mundo, draws from African and Cuban music, the jazz of Pat Metheny, “Danny Boy,” Brazilian music, and even brings in the bagpipes for an album “about honesty. It isn’t about targeting certain demographics. It’s not about recycling the same songs over and over again or writing with a formula. It’s not clone music.” Not a bad ambition for someone on his 17^th album. Especially when it achieves those goals.

Blades’ bedrock remains salsa, that’s a given. But on that foundation he continues to build daring structures, fusing a traditional Malian song with a mambo rhythm, for example. Instead of working on a solely Caribbean front, a Latin front, or even a pan-American front, he’s taken everything to a fully global stage. And it’s a perfectly natural progression, both for the man and his music, as all his records have been.

Of course, his film career certainly shouldn’t be forgotten, either. Unlike so many musicians who’ve gone into acting, he’s never taken the easy route, the simple parts in Hollywood schlock. Instead, true to form, he’s always challenged himself, whether it’s his semi-autobiographical starring role in Crossover Dreams (a film that greatly empowered the Latin community, since actors and crew were all Latin, as was the financing), his roles in All The Pretty Horses, The Milagro Beanfield War and others, or sharing the title role of Paul Simon’s The Capeman on Broadway.

At 54, Blades has become an elder statesman of the Latin community, an artist who deserves, and earns, respect. He’s helped bring all aspects of Latin life into the mainstream of American culture, where it firmly belongs—especially since it won’t be long before Latinos form the majority of the population in the U.S..

Even into his second half-century, Blades hasn’t lost his edge. He’s still pushing at the barriers, as all real artists do—anyone who mixes the bagpipes with Cuban rhythms isn’t about to settle for the status quo. And people like that, the trailblazers who shape what music will sound like in a few years, are important, vital people. Few will go where their hearts carry them, disregarding commercial concerns. Yet Blades has always been that way in his solo work. On 1984’s excellent Buscando América, for example, he didn’t shy away from controversial issues like teenage pregnancy, or the idea of the American subverted by political greed (as relevant now as then). Then, six years later, closing out an era with Ruben Blades And Son de Solar…Live, he could turn in a set of storming, straight-ahead salsa that harked back to his days with Willie Colón.

Blades might not be a household name, his music zipping under the radar, but as an influence and subversion, he’s second to none. Plenty of people can talk the talk; it’s walking the walk that’s the test. And Rubén Blades has never faltered or missed a step.