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.
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.
But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.
And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day.
Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.