Blades wins another Latin Grammy

RUBÉN BLADES, King of Salsa and the man who would be president ,won his fifth Latin Grammys award on Thursday, Nov 20  for his new album Tango.

Enrique Iglesias, Calle 13, Placido Domingo, Niña Pastori and the late flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, were also winners

Blades spoke recently about the benefits of choosing tango over salsa.

Tango was also nominated for album of the year and the 66-year-old said: “People probably have to rub their eyes and say, ‘What, Ruben Blades in the tango category?’ I was surprised because you never know about Grammy nominations. My album Siembra, arguably the biggest seller in the history of salsa, never got nominated for a Grammy.”

Blades, who has also won four main Grammys, believes re-creating his salsa songs as tangos works, even though he had to use completely different phrasing and increase the tempo on songs such as Pedro Navaja reports The Daily Telegraph.

Asked about the change of musical direction, Blades said: “I felt that the instrumentation and the atmosphere that tango creates would make the lyrics more relevant and stronger. Salsa is action music, whereas in the tango you have space for reflection. There is something about tango that is very emotional. The instruments – the violin, the bandoneon – evoke nostalgia, sadness, opportunities lost and/or found. I always felt that some of my lyrics were shortchanged by the salsa format, with its strong rhythms that got in the way.”

Blades and his collaborator, arranger Carlos Franzetti, began discussing the tangos project more than a decade ago,

Franzetti told AP reporter Charles J Gans: “Tangos reflects a genre-blending approach to music that Blades has dubbed ‘mixtura’.”

Blades will soon be going into the studio to do a “rock en espanol” album, also including some English-language songs he wrote with Lou Reed, with his new Paraiso Road Gang band that he formed with his wife, singer Luba Mason, which he says will play a mix from tango and salsa to jazz and bluegrass.

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He will also appeared in the film Hands of Stone, a biopic about Panamanian boxing legend Roberto Duran, starring Venezuelan Edgar Ramirez and Robert De Niro.

He’s embarking on his final world salsa tour next year and plans to quit performing salsa except in Panama by the end of 2016 and is considering running for president. as an independent candidate in 2019.. It’ will be his second run for the scepter, and he also served for four years as tourism czar  in the PRD government of Martin Torrijos.

At the Latin Grammy’s ceremony at GM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, he performed Pedro Navaja, his song about the life and death of a violent street hustler.

His Grammy  award produced mixed feelings in Argentina, home of tango. “ I do not accept the use and abuse of tango with the sole purpose of doing business,” said Nelida Rouchetto, founder of the Casa del Tango. ” Rouchetto also confessed that “I do not like the singing of  Blades”. “His tango is not true,” he said.