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Rubén Blades

 
Artist: Rubén Blades
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Rubén Blades

Similar Artists:

Héctor Lavoe, Manny Oquendo, Johnny Rivera, Eddie Santiago, Tito Nieves, Zucchero, Johnny Pacheco, Johnny Rodriguez, Marvin Santiago, La Sonora Ponceña, Sammy Gonzalez, Ismael Miranda, Bobby Valentín, Larry Harlow

Influenced By:

Cheo Feliciano, Marcelino Guerra

Followers:

Gilberto Santa Rosa, Serralde, Huey Dunbar, Héctor Giovanni, Isaac Delgado, Issac Delgado, Grupo Mojado, Bodega Sonica, La Caramba, Orixa

Worked With:

Michael Vinas, Adalberto Santiago, Louie Ramirez, Eddy Montalvo, Ralph Irizarry, Oscar Hernandez, Jon Fausty, Robert Ameen, Milton Cardona, Larry Harlow

Formal Connection With:

Fania All-Stars, Sting, Willie Colón, Ray Barretto, Guarare
See Rubén Blades Lyrics
  • Born: July 16, 1948, Panama City, Panama
  • Active: '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
  • Genres: Latin
  • Instrument: Vocals, Guitar
  • Representative Albums: "Rubén Blades y Son del Solar...Live!," "Tiempos," "Rosa de los Vientos"
  • Representative Songs: "Pedro Navaja," "Ligia Elena," "Plástico"

Biography

Rubén Blades is one of the most successful vocalists in the history of Panamanian music. A former member of bands led by Ray Barretto and Willie Colón, Blades has continued to influence salsa music with his highly literate, politically tinged lyrics and his modern-minded arrangements, which substitute the usual horn and Latin percussion sections with synthesizers and drum sets. Often referred to as "the Latin Bruce Springsteen," Blades provided a musical voice for the middle class of Central America. Raised in a middle-class neighborhood in Panama City, Blades inherited his musical talents from his parents. His mother, Anoland, who emigrated from Cuba, played piano and sang in Spanish. His father, Ruben Sr., a police detective, played bongos.

Inspired by the doo wop singing of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Blades began singing North American pop and rock songs in his early teens. In 1963, he became the lead singer of a band, the Saints, formed by his older brother, Luis. The political upheaval in Panama during the mid-'60s had a profound effect as Blades became increasingly committed to his own roots, refusing to sing in any language but his native Spanish.

While studying law at the University of Panama, Blades continued to be involved with his music, singing with Conjunto Latino and Los Salvajes del Ritmo. In 1968, an album he recorded with Bush and the Magnificos reached Joe Cuba's producer in New York. Invited to join Cuba's band, he declined in order to complete college. When the Panamanian government closed the university, he made his first trip to the United States. While in the U.S., Blades recorded an album, From Panama to New York, with Pete Rodriguez. Shortly after the album's release, the University of Panama was reopened and Blades returned to complete his undergraduate studies. Although he accepted a position as a lawyer for the Bank of Panama, following his graduation, he returned to the U.S., to visit his parents, who had emigrated to Miami, in 1974.

While in the United States, Blades traveled to New York and took a job in the mailroom of the Latin-oriented Fania record label. A year later, he replaced Tito Allen as featured vocalist in Ray Barretto's band, auditioning in Fania's mailroom. When Barretto left to form a Latin fusion group, Blades took over as bandleader and renamed the group Guarare. In 1975, Blades composed and sang lead on Barretto's recording "Canto Abacua," featured on the album Barretto. As a result, Blades was named Composer of the Year by Latin New York magazine. Blades had also been playing with Willie Colón's band, and he remained with Colón for six years. Their collaboration reached its apex with the three-million-copy-selling album Siembra, which included the single "Pedro Navaja," the biggest selling single in salsa history. Blades' politically oriented lyrics were not universally accepted. In 1980, his song "Tiburon," which spoke out against superpower intervention in the Caribbean, was banned from radio airplay in Miami.

Forming his own band, Los Seis del Solar, in 1982, Blades began to perform an exciting fusion of Latin, rock, reggae, and Caribbean music. Their debut album, Buscando América, was released in 1983. A year later, Blades enrolled in the graduate school at Harvard University, eventually receiving a master's degree in international law.

Since the early '80s, Blades has balanced his musical career with acting and writing songs for such films as The Last Fight, Crossover Dreams, Critical Condition, Fatal Beauty, The Milagro Beanfield War, Dead Man Out, Disorganized Crime, The Lemon Sisters, The Two Jakes, Predator 2, One Man's War, The Josephine Baker Story, Crazy From the Heart, Color of Night, A Million to Juan, Scorpion Spring, and The Devil's Own. Blades shared the title role, with Marc Anthony, in Paul Simon's Broadway musical The Capeman.

Blades, who lives in California with his actress wife Lisa Lebenzon, has remained active with politics. The founder of a new political party in Panama, he ran for president of Panama in 1994, coming in second in the election. While much of Blades' repertoire is in the Spanish language, he recorded an English-language album, Nothing But the Truth, featuring songs by Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, and Sting, in 1988.

The 1990s were relatively busy ones for Blades musically, and he released several albums, including Ruben Blades y Son del Solar...Live! (1990), Caminando (1991), Amor y Control (1994), La Rosa de los Vientos (1996), and Tiempos (1999) before stepping back a bit in the first decade of the 21st century, releasing Mundo in 2002, the Live! In Concert DVD in 2006, and De Panama a Nueva York in 2008. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide
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Rubén Blades

Rubén Blades in New York, 2005
Minister of Tourism
In office
2004 – 2009
Born 16 July 1948 (1948-07-16) (age 61)
Spouse(s) Luba Mason
Residence Panama City
Website [www.rubenblades.com Ruben Blades.com]
Rubén Blades

Rubén Blades in concert, Connecticut, 2005
Background information
Birth name Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna
Born July 16, 1948 (1948-07-16) (age 61)
Panama City, Panama
Genres Salsa, Latin Jazz, Latin Pop, World music
Years active 1960's–present
Labels Fania Records, Elektra, Sony, Columbia
Associated acts Willie Colon, Fania All Stars
Website Rubén Blades' website

Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna (born July 16, 1948) is a Panamanian salsa singer, songwriter, lawyer, actor, Latin jazz musician, and politician, performing musically most often in the Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz genres. As songwriter, Blades brought the lyrical sophistication of Central American nueva canción and Cuban nueva trova as well as experimental tempos and political inspired Nuyorican salsa to his music, creating thinking persons' (salsa) dance music. Blades has composed dozens of musical hits, the most famous of which is "Pedro Navaja," a song about a neighborhood thug who appears to die during a robbery (his song "Sorpresas" continues the story), inspired by "Mack the Knife." He also composed and sings what many Panamanians consider their second national anthem. The song is titled "Patria" (Fatherland). He is an icon in Panama and is much admired throughout Latin America, and managed to attract 18% of the vote in his failed attempt to win the Panamanian presidency in 1994. In September 2004, he was appointed minister of tourism by Panamanian president Martín Torrijos for a five-year term. He holds law degrees from the University of Panama and Harvard Law School.


Contents

Biography

Family history and early life

Blades was born in Panama City, Panama, the son of Anoland Diaz (Diaz was his mother's artistic surname, not her real name; Her maiden name was Bellido de Luna), a Cuban pianist, singer, and actress, and Ruben Dario Blades, Sr., a gifted athlete, percussionist and later a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in Washington, D.C. His mother's great-uncle Juan Bellido de Luna was active in the Cuban revolutionary movement against Spain and was later a writer and publisher in New York. Blades's paternal grandfather, Reuben Blades, was an English-speaking native of St. Lucia who came to Panama as an accountant. His family is not quite sure how the Blades family ended up in St. Lucia, but when his grandfather relocated to Panama, he lived in the Panamanian Bocas del Toro Province. Ruben Blades thought until recently that his grandfather had come to Panama to work on the Panama Canal, as he tells in the song "West Indian Man" on the album Amor y Control ("That's where the Blades comes from") (1992). He explains the source and the pronunciation 'bleids' of his family surname in his web show Show De Ruben Blades (SDRB) episode #18 on his website close to seven minutes into the recording.[1]

In Blades' early days, he was a vocalist in Los Salvajes del Ritmo with fellow university students including Antonio Jose Guzman, and also a songwriter and guest singer with a professional Latin music conjunto; Bush y sus Magníficos. His strongest influence of the day was the Joe Cuba sextet and Cheo Feliciano, whose singing style he copied to the point of imitating his voice tone and vocal range.

1970s - 1980s

Blades earned degrees in political science and law at the Universidad Nacional de Panama and performed legal work at the Bank of Panama as a law student. Upon his graduation in 1974, Blades moved to the United States, staying temporarily with his exiled parents in Miami, Florida before moving to New York City.

Blades began his formal musical career in New York writing songs while working in the mailroom at Fania Records, perceived as a talented songwriter who still had to develop a singing style of his own. The mailroom job was a good opportunity to stay close to the company until the right opportunity came along. Soon Blades was working with salseros Ray Barretto and Larry Harlow. Shortly thereafter, Blades started collaborating with trombonist and bandleader Willie Colón, and they recorded several albums together and participated in albums by plena singer Mon Rivera and the Fania All Stars.

Blades' first notable hit was a song on the 1977 album Metiendo Mano that he had composed in 1968: "Pablo Pueblo," a meditation about a working-class father who returns to his home after a long day at work. The song later became his unofficial campaign song when he ran for president of Panama. The Colón and Blades recording on the same album of Tite Curet Alonso's composition, "Plantación Adentro," which dealt with the brutal treatment of Indian natives in Latin America's colonial times, was an enormous hit in various Caribbean countries. He wrote and performed several songs with the Fania All Stars and as a guest on other artists' releases, including the hits "Paula C," written about a girlfriend at the time; "Juan Pachanga," about a party animal who buries his pain for a lost love in dance and drink; and "Sin Tu Cariño," a love song, featuring a bomba break. The latter two songs feature piano solos by Papo Lucca.

In 1978 Blades wrote the song "El Cantante"; Colón convinced him to give the song to Colón's former musical partner, Héctor Lavoe, to record, since Lavoe's nickname was already "El Cantante de los Cantantes" ("the singer of singers"). Lavoe recorded it that same year, and it became both a big hit and Lavoe's signature song; a biographical film, El Cantante from Lavoe took the same title. (The film El Cantante told a fictionalized version of this story, in which Blades tells Lavoe he wrote the song for him.)

The Colón and Blades album Siembra (1978) became the best-selling salsa record in history. It has sold over 25 million copies, and almost all of its songs were hits at one time or another in various Latin American countries.,[citation needed]

Blades became dissatisfied with Fania and tried to terminate his contract, but was legally obliged to record several more albums. Maestra Vida and its follow-up Canciones del Solar de los Aburridos are highlights. In 1984, Blades signed with Elektra and assembled a top-notch band (known variously as Seis Del Solar or Son Del Solar) and recorded a number of albums with them including the Grammy Award-winning albums Escenas and Antecedente. Fania continued to release recordings compiled from their archives for some years afterwards.

In 1982, Blades got his first acting role in The Last Fight, portraying a singer-turned-boxer vying for a championship against a fighter who was played by real-life world-champion boxer Salvador Sánchez. In 1984, he released Buscando América, and in 1985, Blades gained widespread recognition as co-writer and star of the independent film Crossover Dreams as a New York salsa singer willing to do anything to break into the mainstream. Blades also began his career in films scoring music for soundtracks. Also in 1985, he earned a master's degree in international law from Harvard Law School. He was also the subject of Robert Mugge's documentary The Return of Ruben Blades, which debuted at that year's Denver Film Festival.

After winning his first Grammy Award for Escenas in 1986, he recorded the album Agua de Luna based on the short stories of famed writer Gabriel García Márquez in 1987. The next year he released the English-language collaboration Nothing But the Truth with rock artists Sting, Elvis Costello, and Lou Reed the same year as the more traditionally salsa Antecedente, another Grammy Award winner.

The English-language album received disappointing reviews, but he answered his critics, "I do not believe in the notion that one is condemned to do something because he looks in a certain way or speaks a certain language. To me, music is a universal thing, and I have always been interested in the directions offered me by music in English, directions I could not find, concretely in terms of construction, with the Afro-Cuban rhythms I'd always worked with. I also wanted to leave testimony of the meeting of urban tropical music with rock 'n roll".

Blades had also contributed guest vocals in English to "Bitter Fruit" a song on the 1984 album Freedom - No Compromise by Little Steven.

1990s - 2000s

During the 1990s, he acted in films and continued to make records with Seis/Son del Solar. In 1994 he mounted his unsuccessful presidential bid, founding the party Movimiento Papa Egoró. The album that followed this experience was La Rosa de los Vientos with songs by other Panamanian songwriters, using all Panamanian musicians.

In 1997, Blades headed the cast of singer/songwriter Paul Simon's first Broadway musical, The Capeman, based on a true story about a violent youth who becomes a poet in prison, which also starred Marc Anthony and Ednita Nazario.

His many film appearances include The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), The Two Jakes (1990), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Color of Night (1994), and Devil's Own (1997). In 1999, he played Mexican artist Diego Rivera in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock. In the 2003 film Once Upon a Time in Mexico, starring Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, and Willem Dafoe, he played the role of a retired FBI agent.

Blades' 1999 album Tiempos, which he recorded with musicians from the Costa Rican groups Editus and Sexteto de Jazz Latino, represented a break from his salsa past and a further rejection of commercial trends in Latin music. Ironically, the album won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album. Even more eclectic was the 2002 album Mundo with the 11-member Editus Ensemble and bagpiper Eric Rigler, which incorporated instruments from around the world. The same year, he guested on world music artist Derek Trucks' album, Joyful Noise.

In 2003 he followed the World Music Grammy and Latin Grammy winner Mundo with a web site free-download project. As he said in 2005 when receiving the ASCAP Founders Award about his non-commercial choices, "That's the way I think."

In 2004, he put his artistic careers on hold when he began serving a five-year appointment as Panama's minister of tourism. Beginning in June 2007, however, Blades turned some of his attention back to his artistic career, presenting an "online tv show" titled Show de Ruben Blades (SDRB) on his website.[2]

During the summer of 2008 he took a leave of absence for a mini-tour in Europe, backed by the Costa Rican band Son de Tikizia. When his government service was completed in June of 2009, he reunited the members of Seis del Solar for the 25th anniversary of Buscando America in an ambitious tour of the Americas.

Discography

  • A Las Seis - con Los Salvajes Del Ritmo - Panamanian conjunto banda
  • From Panama to New York (1970) - Rubén Blades & la Orquesta de Pete Rodriguez
  • Barretto - with Ray Barretto orchestra (1975)
  • La Raza Latina - Salsa Suite with Larry Harlow and his orchestra Harlow (1977)
  • Fania All Stars Tribute To Tito Rodríguez (1976)
  • Metiendo Mano (1977) - Rubén Blades & Willie Colón
  • Fania All Stars Spanish Fever (1978)
  • Siembra (1978) - Rubén Blades & Willie Colón
  • Fania All Stars Crossover (1979)
  • Bohemio y Poeta (1979) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Maestra Vida: Primera Parte (1980) - Rubén Blades (produced by Willie Colon)
  • Maestra Vida: Segunda Parte (1980) - Rubén Blades (produced by Willie Colon)
  • Fania All Stars Commitment (1980)
  • Canciones Del Solar De Los Aburridos (1981) - Rubén Blades & Willie Colón
  • The Last Fight (1982) - Rubén Blades & Willie Colon
  • El Que La Hace La Paga (1983) - Rubén Blades
  • Buscando América (1984) - Rubén Blades & Seis del Solar
  • Mucho Mejor (1984) - Rubén Blades
  • Crossover Dreams (1985) soundtrack
  • Escenas (1985) - Rubén Blades y Seis de Solar
  • Doble Filo (1986) - Rubén Blades
  • Agua de Luna (1987) - Rubén Blades y Seis del Solar
  • Antecedente (1988) - Rubén Blades
  • Nothing But the Truth (1988) - Rubén Blades
  • With Strings (1988) Rubén Blades
  • Live! (1990) Rubén Blades y Son del Solar
  • Caminando (1991) - Rubén Blades y Son del Solar
  • Best of Ruben Blades (1992) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Amor Y Control (1992) - Rubén Blades y Son Del Solar
  • Poetry: The Greatest Hits (1993) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Poeta Latina (1993) - Rubén Blades (UK Fania compilation)
  • Mucho Mejor [Westwind] (1995) - Rubén Blades
  • Tras La Tormenta (1995]]) Rubén Blades & Willie Colon
  • La Rosa de Los Vientos (1996) - Rubén Blades
  • Greatest Hits (Rubén Blades album) (1996) - Rubén Blades y Seis del Solar (Elektra compilation)
  • Sus Más Grandes Exitos (1998) - Rubén Blades ( Fania compilation)
  • Tiempos (1999) - Rubén Blades y Editus
  • Sembra Y Otros Favoritos Salsa Para Siempre (2001) - Rubén Blades & Willie Colon (Fania compilation)
  • Best (2001) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Salsa Caliente De Nu York (2002) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Mundo (2002) - Rubén Blades y Editus Ensemble
  • Joyful Noise (2002) - The Derek Trucks Band (Ka-Ma-Lay)
  • rubenblades.com/cd (2003) Rubén Blades etc (download project)
  • Una Decada (2003) - Rubén Blades (Sony compilation)
  • Experencia Ruben Blades (2004) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Lo Mejor, Vol. 1 (2004) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation, import as O Melhor Vol. 1)
  • Lo Mejor, Vol. 2 (2004) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation, import as O Melhor Vol. 2)
  • Across 110th St. (2004) - Spanish Harlem Orchestra featuring Rubén Blades
  • Maestro de la Fania (2005) - Rubén Blades (Fania compilation)
  • Cantares del Subdesarrollo (2009) - Rubén Blades

Filmography

References

  1. ^ http://www.rubenblades.com/sdrb Official website at minute 6:52.
  2. ^ www.rubenblades.com. Official website of Ruben Blades

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
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