Rubén Blades is honored as the Latin Grammy Person of the Year

The multifaceted Panamanian salsa singer Rubén Blades will be honored this Wednesday as the Person of the Year of the 22nd edition of the Latin Grammy Awards, the largest American festival of music in Spanish and Portuguese.

The tribute takes place on the eve of the delivery of the golden gramophones on Thursday, when the awards gala returns to its face-to-face format in Las Vegas after the impasse of the pandemic.

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Blades has made his mark in the music industry with a long list of hits that vindicate the Latin American idiosyncrasy and reality, such as “Looking for America”, “Plantación inside”, “Disappearances” and “Prohibido Olvidar”.

The Panamanian singer-songwriter is also a prominent social activist, with a career spanning nearly five decades that includes acting and politics.

“Rubén Blades is a truly iconic artist who has inspired generations with powerful and intelligent lyrics, and whose genius has championed justice at all levels of society”, Gabriel Abaroa Jr., president of the Latin Recording Academy, said when the announcement was made in June.

Blades then thanked the honor with a statement recognizing his colleagues in the music industry: “Success is never the product of the effort of a single individual, but the consequence of many contributions.”

After the list of nominees was announced in September, Colombian reggaeton player J Balvin (who competes in three categories) called for a boycott of the ceremony, dusting off criticism from previous years that the genre does not win due recognition from the Academy.

But Puerto Rican René “Residente” Pérez, former vocalist of Calle 13, who recorded “La Perla” with Rubén Blades in 2008, stepped out and questioned the Colombian artist, among other reasons, highlighting the tribute to the Panamanian salsa singer.

“Are you telling people of the urban genre to boycott the awards and not to celebrate the artistic life of Rubén Blades?”Residente told J Balvin through his social networks.

“A guy who marked the history of Latin American music, because unlike you he writes his songs”added the Puerto Rican artist, who also set the tone by including social issues in his lyrics and co-leading a movement that led to the resignation of the governor of Puerto Rico in 2019.

“The poet of salsa”

Winner of eight Latin Grammy Awards and nine Grammy Awards, “el poeta de la salsa” has added two other nominations for this edition, including Album of the Year with “Salswing!”.

Born in Panama, Blades, 73, was one of the most iconic interpreters of the salsa movement in New York in the 1970s, hand in hand with Fania All Stars. His first hit as an author was in 1978 with “El Cantante”, recorded by the legendary Héctor Lavoe.

Together with the trombonist Willie Colón, he produced seven albums in two decades, from which some of his most popular hits came out, such as “Pedro Navaja” and “Plástico”.

The salsa singer is trained in law in his native Panama and at Harvard, in the United States.

After decades singing about Latin America and the daily life of Hispanics in the United States, Blades dabbled in politics.

In 1994 he ran for the presidential elections in Panama, losing in third place. In 2004 he supported the candidacy of Martín Torrijos, who appointed him Minister of Tourism of his government until 2009.

The artist will perform on Thursday at the Latin Grammy ceremony with Roberto Delgado & Orquesta, with whom he begins the “Salswing Tour!” by the United States as of November 20.

The Colombian Camilo, the Dominican Juan Luis Guerra and the Spanish C. Tangana are among the favorites, with the highest number of nominations.

The last Latin Grammys were presented in Miami in November last year, in a partially virtual ceremony marked by the pandemic where a Person of the Year was not celebrated.

Colombian Juanes was the last artist to receive this honor, in 2019. Before him, the band Maná, Alejandro Sanz, Marc Anthony, Roberto Carlos and Joan Manuel Serrat, among others, were honored.