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

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

There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.

I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.

So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime.

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

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.