Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- “What would have happened if I had had access to all those tools?” is one of the many questions that Rubén Blades asks when he talks about the new sounds of Latin music led by Bad Bunny or Bizarrap, largely produced with “samplers” or by computer.
“Even the Beatles would have taken advantage of those tools,” says the salsa poet in an interview with EFE on the occasion of his upcoming participation in the Cook Music Festival in Tenerife.
In fact, he remembers how he himself, already in the seventies, recorded one night the sound of the wind coming out of a grate in the New York subway hitting a sculpture on 46th Street, and how he introduced it in the opening of “GDBD”, a “short story” about people who wake up from the dictatorship.
However, Rubén Blades sees a certain danger in technology ending up replacing imagination. “What I do believe is that with each generation the capacity of imagination is lost as the capacity of technology increases,” says Blades, 74, who calls for “care” with this matter.
FROM BLADES TO RENÉ, FROM RENÉ TO BAD BUNNY
Asked if he perceives the new crop of Latino musicians as something more hedonistic and largely lacking in themes that address social or political issues, Blades is cautious and points out that each generation must be free when presenting its vision of what you need “to have fun and inform”.
In any case, it indicates that good Latin music with social content continues to be made, such as the one made by “out of the ordinary” like René Pérez, Residente, who in his opinion has exerted a great influence on Bad Bunny on songs like “El apagón ”.
“If Bad Bunny hadn’t been known for his hedonistic songs, he wouldn’t have been able to educate so many people who aren’t involved in politics with songs like ‘El apagón,’” Blades insists.
Even so, he believes that “not all music has to be about escape” and ensures that there is still room “for political, solidarity and social argument”.
“Each generation in the end is the one that will determine what it wants and how it wants to express itself. And I don’t get involved in that, ”she concludes.
BACK TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD
As for his motivation to continue playing live after more than two thirds of his life on stage, he is clear about it: “I have a lot of fun. I’m not in Panama full time, but when I’m with the band I feel like I’m there, in the neighborhood, with my friends.”
He also adds that it also means financial help for him and the band, and that it is also a reunion with the public, “which is different every time”.
“It is a job that I like and in which I believe. If I didn’t believe in lyrics, it would be a torture to have to say things that I don’t feel and that I don’t consider important. Each new hearing makes me claim, through their reaction, that it was a good decision to end up being a musician instead of a lawyer,” says Rubén Blades, who is a law graduate from Harvard University.
And a political dart: “It is also good, knowing how corrupt the political class is, that there are Panamanians who work and earn their livelihood without having to steal it from the people,” defends Blades.
IN PANAMA, TIME FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Asked about his decision not to run to preside over his country in the 2024 elections, Blades assures that he will help in any way he can to form an independent bloc “interested in creating an alternative to the corruption and mediocrity that exists”, by who will help with ideas and proposals.
What attracts him most about a movement like “Vamos”, he adds, is that political leaders like Juan Diego Vázquez and Gabriel Silva are young people who may be able to encourage breaking the high abstention rate so that corruption “does not win over and over time for clientelism”.
Blades links the situation in Panama with that of Latin America, which he sees as “good” because the instabilities experienced by Peru, for example, or the difficulties of the Chilean left of Gabriel Boric during the constituent process or of Gustavo Petro in Colombia “form part of a process.
“What would worry me is that nothing was happening,” says the singer, who laments the drift of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, “a guy we all admire and who is now taking away nationalities from people who don’t agree with him ”, or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
In this sense, he perceives that, at the media level, Boric or Petro receive against them “the entire arsenal of criticism against Ortega and against Maduro”, despite the fact that they “are not the product of the ideological system of the corrupt partisan and clientelist system”. and that, however, he adds, they are seen “as enemies” because they are not part of elitist environments.
THE RISE OF LIVE MUSIC
Regarding the maneuvers, recently criticized by President Joe Biden, of monopolies such as Ticketmaster-LiveNation in the United States, the dynamic prices and the increase in the cost of concert tickets, Blades is emphatic and considers it “absurd” that this type of of companies seize a high percentage of the tickets to later resell them in secondary resale markets.
“I think the artist is also responsible and can say that tickets are not sold that way, but there is too much interest in money,” laments Blades, who stresses that in the end whoever suffers “is punished by the artist himself.” is the public.
In his opinion, there should be limitations and that not everything is pure capitalism of supply and demand, which should not be applied in certain fields such as art, culture or health, concludes Rubén Blades. EFE
By Cristina Magdaleno Galdona