Even though Rubén Blades's English-language debut isn't due for a while yet, the Panamanian salsa star, lawyer, essayist, activist and actor has already been bear-hugged by the U.S. Anglo intelligentsia. They're rightfully enamored of his first two major-label releases (Buscando America and Escenas) and his credentials, particularly his cachet with the likes of Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. Agua de Luna, in fact, is a series of poems and character studies inspired by some of Márquez's short stories.

Blades's status as a darling of the smart set shouldn't make the general public wary of him. Agua de Luna works just fine as highbrow art, but its real import lies in its accessibility to brows both high and low. Agua de Luna coaxes the listener toward that place in the human psyche where personal passions give birth to political thought and action and where politics, in turn, shape personal passions. In each of Agua's eight librettos, Blades shows that the separation of "head" and "heart" in North American culture is arbitrary, that head and heart, in fact, complete each other.

Agua's sole problem is a uniformness of melody and tempo – in contrast with Blades's first two albums. It's entirely possible, of course, that he wanted to use a certain homogeneity to underscore the connective tissue between central themes. There are several: the soul-straining repercussions of political immorality ("Laura Farina"), the paralysis of collective resignation ("Blackamán"), the difficulties of living a conscious life ("No Te Duermas" ["Don't Fall Asleep"]) and the redemptive power of surrender to spiritual mysteries ("Agua de Luna" ["Moon Water"]).

It's questionable that this album will vault Blades into mainstream stardom in the U.S. – but the eventuality of that fame seems beyond question. Perhaps Agua de Luna is a prelude to fame, a precursor with a crucial message: intellectual mastery is a means, not an end. Without the ineffabilities of heart and soul, intellectualism is just a lot of big words. (RS 496)

LAURA FISSINGER