Born in Mexico and raised in Cuba out of a Spanish mother and a Panamanian father, Romulo Castro fesses up that, above all, he’s «irremissibly Panamanian» in spite of the aforesaid mixture. «And I cling to everything else that rubs off on you along the way, and I write songs and I sing because I’ve got a responsibility in that».

This songwriter and his band Tuira, who has shared the limelight with the likes of Franco de Vita, Ilan Chester, Carlos Varela, Javier Ruibal, Editus, Danilo Perez, Joan Manuel Serrat or Ruben Blades –he’s credited with a collaboration in a couple of albums that gave Mr. Blades a Grammy Award (La Rosa de los Vientos in 1996 and Tiempos in 1999)- told Excellencies magazine that Panama has stamped a deep footprint in his tunes.

Even though he belonged to the Cancer Tropic group and led two other bands –Liberation and Arkanar- his current bunch called Tuira –formed in 1991 and named after one of Panama’s most plentiful rivers- has truly given him a chance to buttress his quest for the homemade elements of Panamanian music only to forge them together and give them a modern touch of his own.

—How much influence did the music of Mexico, Cuba and Panama –so rich in sound beats and rhythms- have on your musical roots? —My Mexican influences are lesser because that’s my birthplace, and my mother was Mexican, the daughter of Spanish republicans who went to exile and settled down there. It was in Cuba where I became aware of who I really am, the country that harbored me and my family when I was ten years old. So, my musical roots are empirical rather than academic and it has Cuban, Panamanian and Spanish origins. «In Cuba, the music of troubadours from Santiago, my hometown, panned out to be an incredible alchemy of both Spain and Africa. From Panama, the rhythmic magic of Darien, the poetry and the chords of Azuero, put together the two old continents with the vital aboriginal music. That was glued together with everything else that rubs off on you along the way, and I write songs and I sing because I’ve got a responsibility in that».

—What kind of influence did Mr. Blades’ music as a songwriter have on you? —I was very active in Panama when Ruben Blades returned. To my privilege, he handpicked two of my songs for a project that wound up being named after one of the songs itself: La Rosa de los Vientos (Compass Card). He honored me again as he included three of my tunes in his Tiempos (Times) album. But the fact that both albums nabbed the much-coveted Grammy Award is something I’m really very proud of and has helped put my music and my Tuira band on the map.

—How much of a role did the recordings of your songs play on the spread of your work? —The recording industry –today threatened by a virtual check- is designed to sell, not to promote. How much of what was sold didn’t even deserve to be promoted? How many songs that were supposed to be promoted never made it to the studio? And if this problem is serious in the First World, the Third World is crying out loud for public policies of art promotion. «From a personal standpoint, however, I’ve been sort of lucky. I refer to the bunch of talent that we afford to waste away as a society without even knowing that it’s somewhere out there, without even suspecting that we could be a whole lot better with their company».

—What does this encounter with audiences, songwriters and musical styles from other nations mean to you? —From my specific Panamanian circumstance, singing to my homeland, to the fact that we’re more than just a canal and that we have a lot more to offer to the world and to a much better future is vital to me. And I find that possibility in every opportunity I have to sing in and out of my country.

—Any plans in store in the short and long run for songwriter and musician Romulo Castro? —I’ve just put out my first book, in Panama, that, of course, is also an album. It’s entitled Palabra Decantada (Decanted Word). It all began as a poem book trial I eventually added music scores, testimonies, photographs, drawings and something I called an essay. The little album that comes with the package also has some features of its own, I guess, since it’s my first live, unplugged CD, only featuring strings and vocals. By answering this question I kind of felt as if I were writing it all over again because it looks like this interview, only that it contains music and it has over three hundred pages.

«Apart from that, the Tuira band is ready to set out on the thorny and vital road toward its fourth album and we’ve got a couple of international projects in the pipeline. We don’t make a living by doing what we like, but we like what we do for a living. The important thing here is to always have a project to hold on to. I mean, to hit the road. There’ll be time to see if we can