The Best Jazz Albums of 2021 (So Far) jazzwise.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jazzwise.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
16 April 2021
The paths of big-band Afro-Cuban music and big-band American jazz have run parallel and intersected over the decades and now Ruben Blades adds a new chapter to this swinging history.
A native of Panama, Blades has a firm place in the pantheon of Latin music and culture. First, he was a principle in the 1978 landmark best-selling album
Siembra with Willie Colon, which set a high-water mark for politically conscious music in the dance-oriented genre. Since then, Blades has also had a successful career as an actor (most recently fighting zombies on AMC’s
Fear the Walking Dead) and as an activist (unsuccessfully running for president of Panama in 1994 and subsequently serving five years as Panama’s minister of tourism).