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

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

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

I think in New York we had respect and we would pretty much fill up the places where we went, but I never got the sense that we really were Number 1 here in New York among the Latin crowds.

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

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

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