I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

I grew up speaking both languages, and for me that's really important.

A real active music set, based and really concentrated on what the music's all about. That's what I'm all about - singing and a really good strong music set.

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American.

If you write songs and if you write music that's very sincere and very honest, it's pop music, but it is pop music with a lot of honesty and a lot of heart.

And my career, the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.