But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.

Everyone comes back. It makes no difference how far we wander, we always have our country, our land, in our souls and our minds.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez.

What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another.

I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.

Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models.

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.

Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.

Words are powerful. They too can be the agents of what is new, of what is conceivable and can be thought and let loose upon the world.

Love is bigger than everything.

Business succeed when friends and relatives pays their bills promptly.

The real heroes are those ones who are forgotten, forsaken and remain the nameless ones, in the history of time.

The influence is really all over the place. Detroit, definitely because of Motown and Stooges. When you come from a place like Detroit, you're really proud of what you have there.

I never like things that don't look nice. It's really that simple.

You know the trouble with real life? There's no danger music.

The violin - that most human of all instruments.

It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; Griefs, where they wound in solitude, Wound more deeply.