I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.

Tango was very popular in Panama at the time when I was growing up. In the Fifties in Panama, the radio stations played all types of music.

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.

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.

I think being born in Panama was a blessing because Panama is a port city. It's a really - the mentality is that - I remember that of admitting things in. You know, ports, ideas come in and out all the time.

The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city.