PANAMA CITY (Top40 Charts) - Already a
Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, Panamanian salsa star and actor
Ruben Blades said Tuesday his new album "Mundo" (World) is a call for unity against racism through music.
"Racism is absurd and my new record reflects that," Blades told a news conference at the launch of his 17th album. "We are all basically brothers and we all come from the same place. Underneath our skin, our bones are the same color," said Blades, dressed in his trademark black hat and dark glasses.
The new album is a fusion of Irish, Arabic and Afro-Cuban rhythms, substituting for the usual horn and Latin percussion sections of salsa and reflecting mankind's shared roots, Blades said.
Blades is perhaps best known for his 1970s song "Pedro Navaja" (Peter Jack Knife), the biggest selling salsa single of all time, and which helped salsa music achieve the international recognition its enjoys today.
Grammy award winner Blades, who is known for both his innovative salsa style and his politically charged lyrics, said books on genetics such as Jonathan Weiner's "Time, Love and Memory," which deals with the origins of behavior, influenced his new material.
The new album, produced by Sony Music, a unit of Sony Corp . is due for release in June, his publicity team said.
Aside from his new album, Blades said he is considering re-entering Panamanian politics in 2004, when Panama's current presidential term ends.
Blades ran for the presidency in 1994, founding the political party Movimiento Papa Egoro. After initially leading in the polls, he came in third place. "I realize now that my biggest error (in the presidential race) was not to have spent enough time in Panama. I failed to understand that going into politics means big responsibilities, and that you have got to give yourself completely or not at all," said Blades, who has lived in the United States since the 1970s.
Blades, who also has appeared in several Hollywood movies, said he plans to return to live permanently in Panama starting in December 2003 to be with his family, and will consider running again for president.
Blades said the biggest political challenges facing the heavily indebted Central American nation are rising unemployment, failing public transportation, overcrowded jails and poverty. Some 40 percent of Panama's 2.8 million people live in poverty, according to the United Nations.
