Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
“WEll, I’ve been around, “says Rubén Blades, correctly.” One of the most famous Latin singers of the past years, the Panamanian singer, 77, has been well known in salsa, collecting 25 Grammy Awards – 13 Latin, 12 mainstream – and receiving shouts from the new generation of Rounnia and Bad Bunny.
Bars have moved between music, law, politics and movies as if they were all part of the same conversation. With a law degree from Harvard, he ran a presidential election in Panama – he was also the country’s tourism minister from 2004 to 2009 – and starred in films with Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington, all of which he produced himself. “The manager can go crazy,” he laughs, his gray eyes gazing at a video from his home in New York City, ahead of a show he’s playing in London.
Even in the beginning, he wasn’t following a conventional script. In the 1970s, when salsa leaned more towards love songs, Blades wrote about crime, violence, and the street. He traces this to his childhood in San Felipe, the then-neglected heart of Panama City, where he was the son of a Colombian-born police officer and a Cuban-born actress and singer. Hearing Mack the Knife from The Threepenny Opera was very inspiring. “It was about a tough guy,” he says, “someone who would have belonged to our gang: Diente de Oro, Zapatas Negras. I kept these thoughts in my head.”
After Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega impersonated Blades’ father as a CIA spy, the family moved to the US, and Blades got a job in the mail room at Fania Records in New York, a label that supported salsa’s golden age. There he met Willie Colón, and together they changed the genre, mixing social commentary with infectious music made for dancing.
New York in the 70s fed into his writing. “42nd Street was rough,” he says, full of thieves, prostitutes and prostitutes – the same things he saw growing up in Panama City: “The port city, accepting people, things, ideas, inside and outside. There was cement, dirt and fear.” Of all that came Pedro Navajaa vignette of urban crime, now one of the most popular songs in Latin music.
Blades credits his music to his grandmother Emma, who taught him to read at the age of four. “He forced me to learn,” says Blades, whose 1987 album Agua de Luna pays homage to the stories of his friend, Gabriel García Márquez. “He used to tell me, ‘We are not poor, we don’t have money, you can have money but you will be poor if you don’t know anything.'”
Such skepticism permeates his politics, which do not align well with any ideology. “I’ve been hit left, right…everywhere,” he shakes. When Blades ran for president of Panama in 1994 (coming third), some dismissed him as a musician because of his depth. He points to his legal studies, including his Harvard degree – the hardest thing he’s ever done. “Many times I wanted to leave,” he says, “but I didn’t quit, but I also wanted my mother to see me graduate.”
He cares about celebrity politics but realizes his reach. He mentions Bad Bunny, who participated in Blades’ shows with his parents growing up, and who Blades created for them. special guest appear at a concert in Puerto Rico in 2025. Influence is not enough: “I am more reliable than 85% of the politicians in my country; right now, Bad Bunny can attract more young people to vote than all the political parties in Puerto Rico.
His depth is evident when he speaks directly to the law on issues of immigration and government power. States have the right to make their own immigration laws, he says. “When we come to London to play, we will have visas.” But expelling a person who came as a child and built a life in the US, for him, cannot be said, and he describes the killing of the protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis as “murder. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is described as “a magical charlatan who wants to destroy democracy and become king like on Mongo” – a bad world in Flash Gordon. “But I don’t think that the United States will join the fascist group. The courts are still powerful. The U.S. military is maintaining its independence, which is making things tougher.” A short pause. “As a Latin American, I have seen the rise of military dictatorships.”
Acting is another of his talents: Blades has appeared in over 40 films but never trained. He said: “Reading helps. “It gives you the opportunity to think about the situation.” His first role was as a singer who turned punch in the B-film made by Fania of 1982 The Last Fight, together with Colón. He went on to films such as The Two Jakes, in which he played and was directed by Jack Nicholson – “I liked it, the critics didn’t” – and a long time in the TV drama. Fear the Walking Dead. He is glad, he says, that the series is over; had begun to feel like he was calling, a mysterious Salvadore turned zombie killer. His next film is Jonás Cuaron’s Campeón Gabacho, a story about a man from Mexico, which won the audience award in 2026. SXSW Festival. He also says, that he would love to work with Mark Rylance.
Then she laughs as she tells me that Denzel Washington once made her dance on a social media show – a challenge for the salsa legend who insists many Latin singers don’t dance well. “But after a few drinks…” He shrugs his shoulders.
For him, the appeal of salsa is something important. “In this segregated world, salsa has an advantage over other music: contact. You have to touch someone. You have to work together.” He is smiling. Imagine that.
