Buscando América is an album one feels obligated to like; it's the major-label debut of the highly touted, Panama-born salsa star Rubén Blades. Unfortunately, though, Blades' talent just doesn't translate.

Blades wields great influence in Spanish-speaking North, South and Central America, not just as a singer, songwriter and bandleader, but as a political commentator. Several of the tracks on this album offer political statements embedded in literary narratives: stories about a workaday cop, about the families of "disappeared" South Americans and about a radical priest gunned down while saying Mass. The songs are sung in Spanish, and though that needn't be a problem, the music on Buscando América fails to convey the passion and intricacy of Blades' writing. In addition, he's not a terribly prepossessing singer, his tunes are totally subsidiary to the lyrics, and though the musicians are clearly talented (especially pianist Oscar Hernández), the playing never catches fire. Thus, even the stirring content of "El Padre Antonio y el Monaguillo Andres" or "Desapariciones" remains an abstraction; the messages go from the lyric sheet to the head without touching the heart. (RS 423)

DON SHEWEY