The New York Times 
August 18, 1985

RUBEN BLADES TURNS HIS TALENTS TO MOVIES 

By STEPHEN HOLDEN 

''I've always believed that music can do more than
offer an escape - it can help bring people together to
change their lives,'' the Panamanian-born salsa star
Ruben Blades declared recently. 

A resident of New York for the last 11 years, Mr.
Blades is one of the world's most popular Latin
American music stars. On some 10 solo albums that
blend poetry, political observation and salsa, Mr.
Blades has changed the face of a style that originated
among New York Puerto Ricans as a popular dance music.
An intellectual who maintains passionate ties to
street-level Latino culture, Mr. Blades has been
compared to such thoughtful pop-rock composers as
Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Paul Simon. And
with the release this month of his first movie,
''Crossover Dreams,'' Mr. Blades stands on the
threshhold of a promising acting career. 

In the film, which opens on Friday at the Cinema
Studio, Mr. Blades brings a solid, understated
charisma to the role of Rudy Veloz, a popular singer
from East Harlem who tries and fails to ''cross over''
from the Latin music market into the mainstream of
American pop. 

The movie, which was co-produced and co-written by
Manuel Arce with the director Leon Ichaso, was shot in
62 New York locations at a cost of only $600,000.
Reviewing the film after a screening last March as
part of the Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New
Film Series, Vincent Canby called it ''a sagely funny
comedy, both heartfelt and sophisticated, a movie that
may well realize the crossover dreams that elude
Rudy.'' 

''Crossover Dreams'' tells the story of an ambitious
Latin American singer who could be a naive and
opportunistic mirror image of the idealistic star who
portrays him. A popular performer on New York's
''cuchifrito circuit,'' Rudy is signed by a record
company for a $15,000 advance to make a Latin-flavored
pop-rock record. Convinced that stardom and the easy
life are just around the corner, Rudy ditches his
longtime girlfriend, abandons his best friend and
musical partner, Orlando, and moves out of the barrio
and into a fancy apartment. 

After an initial rush of publicity and promotion,
Rudy's album is a flop. Broke and cut off from the
musical community that nurtured him, he is so
desperate that he considers making a cocaine deal to
subsidize a comeback. But after thinking things over,
he returns to his old neighborhood and reunites with
Orlando to form a new band. 

In an earlier version, ''Crossover Dreams'' ended
differently. Rudy makes the drug run and ends up shot
dead in Colombia. But the producers decided that such
a relentlesly downbeat story presented too grim a
vision. Mr. Blades has mixed feelings about the
change. But even softened, ''Crossover Dreams'' offers
a believably gritty view of the music business at the
street level. It also raises a question: Why hasn't a
salsa star succeeded in penetrating the mainstream of
Anglo-American rock? 

Mr. Blades believes that it ultimately comes down to a
matter of motive. 

''I find the whole idea of crossover dangerous,
because it implies the abandonment of one base for
another,'' he said. ''I'd rather talk about
convergence - the idea of two sides meeting in the
middle of a bridge. Some people in the music industry
feel that because of the language barrier the songs
won't ever be accepted by English-speaking North
Americans, but I refuse to believe it. The people who
have tried to cross over have failed because they were
either seeking to escape their own backgrounds or
trying to cash in. The attempts have been forced,
rather than natural, and when the elements don't
match, you have performers who end up looking like
fools.'' 

With a recently earned master's degree in law from
Harvard, a friendship with the Nobel Prize-winning
author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and nearly unanimous
critical acclaim for his 1984 album, ''Buscando
America,'' Mr. Blades is widely considered the artist
most likely to succeed in breaking through the
barrier. ''Buscando America'' (''Searching for
America'') was Mr. Blades's first album for a
non-Latin label (Elektra), and it has sold close to
300,000 copies worldwide. His second Elektra album,
''Escenas,'' is scheduled to be released in October,
and it will include a duet with Linda Ronstadt. 

In the world of salsa, Mr. Blades has been a
trailblazing performer for the last decade. He was one
of the first salsa composers to write his own material
and to put political themes in his lyrics. Salsa was
traditionally an Afro-Cuban-descended dance music
characterized by heavy poly- rythmic underpinnings and
a flaring brass section. Mr. Blades and his sextet,
Seis del Solar (Six From the Tenements), have replaced
the brass with vibes giving the music an airier feel
that helps focus more attention on the lyrics. These
modifications give the music a much broader
internationalist flavor than traditional salsa. It is
a sound that reflects Mr. Blades's ideal of a music
that embraces the widest possible sense of Latin
American community. That ideal even includes some
elements of rock. 

Looking back at his childhood growing up a tough,
working-class neighborhood of Panama City, the
37-year-old Mr. Blades remembers being deeply affected
by the same musical revolutions that also swept the
United States and England. 

''Rock and roll in the mid-50's was a turning point
for many of us because it was the first music we'd
heard made by people who were close to our own age,''
he recalled. ''I remember seeing Frankie Lymon and the
Teenagers in the movie 'Rock, Rock, Rock.' They were
kids who looked like guys that might have hung out on
our corner. We were flabbergasted that kids could do
those things. Doowop records flooded the Panamanian
market, and everybody started forming vocal groups and
harmonizing in building entrances where they could
find a good echo. For me it was a revelation to
realize I didn't have to wait till I was 25 to be a
musician. The first Latin band I really liked was the
Joe Cuba Sextet. They had a street sense in their
songs along with a tremendous elegance.'' 

The 1964 riots, which left 21 dead after students in
the Canal Zone, attempting to raise the Panamanian
flag next to the American flag, were attacked by
police, ended Mr. Blades's romantic infatuation with
American culture. 

''I stopped and looked at myself and realized that I
was a Panamanian, and that my eyes weren't going to
turn blue,'' he recalled. ''I saw I had to deal with
the reality of who I am. That coincided with my
serious interest in Latin music and my decision to
write and sing in Spanish. There was an Argentinian
singer named Piero who wasn't the usual phony love
balladeer. His songs talked about social themes and
issues and gave glimpses of the neighborhood and the
city. I realized I could do the same thing with my
reality.'' 

Mr. Blades came to New York briefly in 1970 to make an
album but returned to Panama where he took a law
degree and started working for a bank in Panama. But
in 1974 he returned to New York to pursue a fulltime
musical career. After working in the mail room at
Fania records, New York's leading salsa label, he
began singing conventional salsa with Ray Barretto's
band. On his own, he also started writing and singing
socially conscious songs that evoked Hispanic pride
and solidarity. And in 1976, he teamed up with the
bandleader Willie Colon in a series of ground-breaking
records, one of which, ''Siembra,'' became the
best-selling salsa album in history. Its most famous
song, ''Pedro Navaja,'' tells the story of a barrio
murder, a la ''Mack the Knife.'' 

The graceful folkish salsa of last year's ''Buscando
America'' incorporates snatches of reggae, doowop and
other rock and roll inflections into a salsa format.
Mr. Blades's favorite song from the album is ''GDBD,''
a spoken recitation whose aural backdrop is the
recorded drone of a musical sculpture near Times
Square. Inspired in part by Franz Kafka, ''GDBD'' is a
poetic monologue describing the inner thoughts of a
secret police agent on the morning before he is about
to make political arrests. 

Recently, Mr. Blades has embarked on an odd
long-distance collaboration with the author Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, whom he first met in person in Mexico
last March. 

''I love him not because of his skills but because he
is an intellectual who likes salsa music - he has kept
one foot in the popular culture,'' Mr. Blades said.
''I'm writing a series of songs based on his early
stories. The songs don't retell the stories but
express the emotions I felt reading them.'' 

Having achieved what seems to be firm foothold on the
non-Hispanic market while remaining a huge star in
Spanish-speaking countries, Mr. Blades can now add
possible movie stardom to his list of accomplishments.
But although he is eager to be a success, he not
interested in stardom its own sake. There is a good
chance that he will give it all up to return to Panama
to put his fame to political use. 

''I don't think of myself as a messiah,'' he
emphasized. ''What I have is a strange combination of
credentials that permit me to sit people down at the
same table who would not ordinarily talk to each
other. In Panama today there is a deep cynicism about
the Government and a sense that nothing anyone can do
will make a difference. Because the young people look
up to me, I believe I can stimulate them to try to
address the issues and try to resolve them without
expecting miracles.'' 

A movie like ''Crossover Dreams,'' Mr. Blades
believes, is inspirational not just for what it says
about remaining faithful to one's community but in the
fact that it was made entirely by Latins. 

''It may be a collection of cliches to some, but
that's what life is when you're in that position,''
Mr. Blades said. ''I can't say enough for the people
of East Harlem. They brought us soup and let us film
in their homes in exchange for our painting them.
Everybody in the community cooperated. It was a Latin
effort done by ourselves to help ourselves. That's
what I think the whole trick of saving oneself comes
down to. If you're going to swim, you don't expect to
be picked out of the water by a boat that may never
come.''