Ruben Blades Quotes

"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."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: End, Now, Right)

"Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Music, Youth)

"So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Panama)

"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."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Family, Money, Obvious)

"So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Music, America, Cities)

"So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Military)

"So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Family, Panama)

"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."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Life, Mother, Songs)

"There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Television)

"They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Money)

"We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: People, Dance)

"People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: People, Being, Credit)

"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."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Music)

"In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Interest)

"You know, it was uncomfortable doing the same thing. I don't like a rut."
- Ruben Blades

"What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: People, Fact)

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

"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
(Related: Music, Day)

"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
(Related: First, Panama)

"Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Music, Commerce)

"It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Germany)

"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
(Related: Music, Dancing, Pretty, Sound)

"It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: People, America)

"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
(Related: People, Drugs)

"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
(Related: Crowds, Pretty, Respect, Sense)

"I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Society, Ignorance, Risk)

"I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Mother, Opera, Singing)

"I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: July, Panama)

"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
(Related: America, American, First)

"It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Law, Sense)

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