PANAMA CITY – Panamanian singer Ruben Blades has launched his new album, “Cantares del subdesarrollo” (Lyrics of Underdevelopment) on his Web site, where it will be sold directly without the intervention of any record label.

The disc was recorded entirely by Blades in the garage of his home in Los Angeles where he began working on it in 2003, playing most of the musical instruments himself plus doing the vocals, Orosman de la Guardia, who manages the artist’s Web site, told Efe.

Blades says on his Web site that he is dedicating this project “spiritually” to the people of Puerto Rico, especially to Ismael Rivera, Tite Curet Alonso and Ray Barretto, and musically to Cuba “for its original contributions to the development of the worldwide urban musical style.”

“And to the courage,” he said, “of the noble Cuban people that have survived the imperialist blockade and the Marxist dictatorship without losing their essential unity, humor, love and hope.”

The new album was not launched previously because Blades was occupied as tourism minister, a post he held from 2004 until this July, De la Guardia said.

Blades is kicking off his “Todos Vuelven” (Everyone Returns) tour in Puerto Rico – where the singer and actor has already arrived – to celebrate the 25th year of the “Buscando America” (Looking for America) album.

The new album is an independent production in the way it was recorded, “very natural, without special effects or synthesizers, it’s acoustic with meaningful lyrics,” De la Guardia said.

“This has been done with almost total independence, with what is known as a ‘garage band,’ because today’s technology and electronic devices allow you to create your own recording studio in your own home,” De la Guardia said.

Nor did Blades approach any record label to produce the disc that is now available online, where either the entire album can be purchased or individual numbers for 99 cents each.

This project had a forerunner in 2002 when Blades, his wife Luba Mason and a group of Panamanian, Mexican and Costa Rican artists offered a musical production on their Web site for the first time it had ever been done, three years before the British rock group Radiohead did the same, De la Guardia said.

The disc, with nine songs, was also presented Monday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the only place it will be distributed physically under the Ruben Blades Productions label, De la Guardia said.

Blades said on his Web site that the “purity” and “lack of formal arrangements” with which it was produced, the disc has taken him back to an era he never experienced using a typical five- or six-piece Cuban band with tumbas, bongos, timpani, bass, maracas, the island’s typical guitar with three double strings called a tres, and clave, or sticks clicked rhythmically together. EFE