Panama Lyrics Heard Again

Rubén Blades has a very specific reason for calling his current tour “Todos Vuelven,” or “Everybody Returns.” After suspending his music and film career for five years to serve as a cabinet minister in Panama, his homeland, Mr. Blades is back, on the road and with a new album, testing the waters and trying to figure out whether the entertainment business still has a place for him.

Yes, I’m back in it, but with discrimination and focus,” Mr. Blades said this week over lunch at a Cuban-Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side that he has frequented since the mid-1970s, when he experienced his first success as a salsa star with “Pablo Pueblo,” “Pedro Navaja” and other socially conscious songs. “The world changed while I was away, and the idea now is to see how to fit in.”

Mr. Blades, 61, and Seis del Solar, the band that has recorded with him since the 1980s, will be playing Saturday night at the United Palace ballroom in Washington Heights. But his formal reintroduction to American audiences occurred this month at the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony in Las Vegas, where he sang with Calle 13, the Puerto Rican reggaetón and hip-hop duo that won five awards that night and may be the hottest act in Latin music right now.

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