This record has a lot of influences that I'd love to cover, like Marvin Gaye and Earth, Wind and Fire. Maybe I'll do some covers of my major influences during my live show.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American.

I'm a big believer in education, period.

A real active music set, based and really concentrated on what the music's all about. That's what I'm all about - singing and a really good strong music set.

It happened in Miami, in Coral Gables, a great big ol' Cuban wedding. It was pretty intense.

If there was any other place I would live, other than Miami, it would be California. It's beautiful. The weather is just gorgeous, I love being here, too.

I have a bachelor's and a master's in jazz.

I write in English first, and then I translate to Spanish. I've always felt more comfortable with the English side of things first.

So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.

Even before I became a recording artist, I did other things in music. I was a teacher, I did studio work, and I was an arranger and a producer.

All they want is to point a finger.

To see a thing as it is, we have to give up our preconceived perception about it.

Life is like a poetry, without meaning or purpose - it's useless.

The two great movers of the human mind are the desire of good and the fear of evil.

Men find happiness neither by means of the body nor through possessions, but through uprightness and wisdom.

I'm 27 years clean, and when you get clean, you see things in a different way. It makes your life so much more manageable.

I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.

Singing is basically a form of pleasant, controlled screaming.

Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God's eyes.

I'm so familiar with what Malcolm X wrote at certain stages of his own life and development.