I really think that music itself, being one of the greatest possible vehicles for mass communication, should be probed to its extremes, to see how effective it can actually become, which is one of the reasons why I became also interested in presenting political points of view.
People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.
Not everybody goes to government to serve themselves and not their country.
It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.
I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.
Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.
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.
I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.
There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.
Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.
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.
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.
So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.
So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime.
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.
What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.
They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.
In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.
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.
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.
