“I’m not quitting!” Rubén Blades, the salsa player who performed with Jack Nicholson, inspired Bad Bunny – and served as Panama’s tourism minister | music

“W“Well, I was there,” says Robin Blades accurately. One of the most influential Latin musicians of the past half-century, the 77-year-old Panamanian singer-songwriter has been a definite force in salsa, collecting 25 Grammy Awards — 13 Latin, 12 major — and garnering compliments from a new generation including Rosalía and Bad Bunny.

Blades moved between music, law, politics, and film as if they were all part of the same conversation. He has a law degree from Harvard University, ran for president in Panama — he was also the country’s tourism minister from 2004 to 2009 — and has had film roles alongside Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt, and Denzel Washington, all of which he performed alone. “The manager would go crazy,” he laughs, his gray eyes crinkling during a video call from his home in New York City, ahead of a gig in London.

Even early on, he didn’t follow the usual script. In the 1970s, when salsa music was based largely on love songs, Blades wrote about crime, violence and the street. This goes back to his childhood in San Felipe, the then-neglected heart of Panama City, where he was the son of a Colombian-born detective and a Cuban-born actress and singer. Hearing Mack the Knife from The Threepenny Opera was particularly poignant. “It was about a strong man, someone who could be from one of our gangs: Dente de Oro, Zapatas Negras. I kept these ideas in my head,” he says.

After Panamanian military commander Manuel Noriega accused Blades’ father of spying for the CIA, the family moved to the United States, and Blades found work in the mailroom at Fania Records in New York, the label that supported the golden era of salsa music. There he met Willy Colon, and together they reshaped the genre, mixing social commentary with infectious, danceable beats.

New York in the 1970s fueled his writing. 42nd Street was rough, he says, full of thieves, pimps and sex workers — the same archetypes he saw while growing up in Panama City: “A coastal city, accepting of people, things and ideas, inside and out.” There was cement, dirt, and fear.” Out of all of that came Pedro Navaja, a short urban crime scene that is now one of the most famous songs in Latin music.

Blades credits the literary streak in his music to his grandmother Emma, ​​a teacher, who taught him to read when he was four years old. “She pushed me to educate myself,” says Blades, whose 1987 album “Agua de Luna” honors the stories of his friend Gabriel García Márquez. “She would tell me: ‘We’re not poor. We just don’t have money. You can have money but you’re still poor if you don’t know anything.'”

Such doubts run through his policies, which do not align neatly with any ideology. He shrugged his shoulders, saying, “I was beaten left and right… from both sides.” When Blades ran for president of Panama in 1994 (he came in third), some dismissed him as a singer out of his depth. He points to his legal training, including a degree at Harvard, as the hardest thing he has ever done. “A lot of times, I wanted to leave, but I wasn’t one to give up. I also wanted my mother to see me graduate,” he says.

He’s wary of celebrity politics but recognizes how widespread it is. “I have more credibility than 85% of the politicians in my country,” recalls Bad Bunny, who attended Blades shows with his parents growing up, and for whom Blades appeared as a special guest at a concert in Puerto Rico in 2025. “I have more credibility than 85% of the politicians in my country; right now, Bad Bunny can attract more young people to vote than all the political parties in Puerto Rico. But not every artist is qualified to enter politics — you need education. You need involvement. You need serious people.” “Turn them around.”

His seriousness is evident when he speaks with legal precision about immigration and state power. He says states have the right to set immigration laws. “When we come to London to play, we will have visas.” But deporting someone who arrived as a child and built a life in the United States is, for him, indefensible, and he describes the killing of protesters Rene Judd and Alex Peretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis as “murder. Immigration is used as an excuse to justify the inexcusable.” On the other hand, Donald Trump is described as “a narcissistic charlatan who wants to destroy democracy and become an emperor like Mongo” – the rogue planet in Flash Gordon. “But I don’t think the United States will descend into complete fascism. The judiciary is still strong. The US military maintains its independence, which is keeping things together.” pause. “As a Latin American, I have seen the rise of military dictatorships.”

Acting is his other skill: Blades has appeared in more than 40 films but has received no formal training. “Reading helps,” he says. “It lets you imagine situations.” His first role was as a singer-turned-boxer in the 1982 Fania-produced B-movie The Last Fight, alongside Colón. He then moved on to films such as The Two Jakes, starring and directed by Jack Nicholson – “I loved it, but the critics didn’t love it” – and a long-running run in the TV drama Fear the Walking Dead. He says he’s glad the series is over. He was starting to feel like he was connecting with his character, a Salvadoran secret agent turned barber turned zombie killer. His next film is Jonas Cuarón’s Campeón Gabacho, a story about a Mexican immigrant, which won the Audience Award at the 2026 SXSW festival. He mentions in passing that he would like to work with Mark Rylance.

Then he smiled as he told me that Denzel Washington once made him dance on a TV talk show — a challenge to the salsa myth that insists that many Latin musicians don’t dance well. “But when I have a few drinks…” he shrugs.

For him, the appeal of salsa is fundamental. “In this isolated world, salsa has an advantage over other musical forms: connection. You have to touch someone else. You have to work together.” He smiles. “Imagine that.”