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.

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

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.

And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day.

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

There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.

It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

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 I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.

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.

It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.

So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.

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 that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

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.

It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.

I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.

I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.

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.

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.

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

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.

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.

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.

Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.

Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69.

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.

A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you.

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.

In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.

I think being born in Panama was a blessing because Panama is a port city. It's a really - the mentality is that - I remember that of admitting things in. You know, ports, ideas come in and out all the time.

Tango was very popular in Panama at the time when I was growing up. In the Fifties in Panama, the radio stations played all types of music.

There's something about the tango that brings even more emotion out of the lyrics.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.