Ruben Blades Rides a New Wave : The singer is charting a fresh course with an album that defies the Latin rhythm craze.

Ruben Blades--singer, actor, politician, lawyer, poet--stands on the top deck of a high-speed catamaran in his jeans, black sneakers, black suit jacket, black hat and sunglasses, talking. About Celtic music’s influence in Spain. About genetics. About Peter Gabriel. About universal music. About nearly everything.

It is telling that the famed salsero was here Saturday, bobbing along on the dark blue water between Long Beach and Avalon, heading toward Catalina Island, where he headlined a concert that evening. He has been called many things, genius among them. But it is courage that defines Ruben Blades, a man willing to take chances.

Years ago, Blades was nearly sunk in a small boat off the coast of his native Panama, coming home in high seas and heavy winds from an island where he had lived for three weeks, studying the native population for his law school thesis. He’d planned to take a small plane, but the winds were too high for it to take off, and the thesis was due in three days.

A small motorboat ferried Blades home that day. With more than a dozen people crammed in, it rode too low, rocking on the violent sea, tipping perilously close to disaster. Blades recalls clutching his papers to his chest, scared they’d be ruined, and even more afraid he would die.

“It was pretty scary,” confesses Blades, who also performs Friday at the House of Blues. “I remember just looking out and there was nothing but water, and thinking, if this thing goes down, I’m dead. . . . So now, every time I get on a boat, I get a little. . . . “ His sentence trails off, and he shrugs and makes an uncertain face to convey the thought. “If I ever end up in the ocean that way, I will open my mouth and breath water and drown quickly.”

A tape recorder rolls. Blades is an easy interview--full of theories and history, newly energized creatively thanks to his new band, Editus, a young ensemble of classically trained Costa Rican musicians who, like him, will not compromise creativity for commercial success.

It’s not surprising that Blades, 51, has so much to say. After all, he grew up in a humble home in Panama and went on to help invent salsa in New York in the 1970s, alongside Willie Colon. He got an international law degree from Harvard, and even ran for president in Panama in 1994.

Even though he was presented with a hotel room on Catalina for the night, Blades declined it, saying he would not be treated differently than the rest of his band. He returned to Long Beach, where the band was staying, that same night, on an 11 p.m. ferry.

This sense of social justice also defines Blades, in his lyrics and political activism--which makes it all the more baffling that, as he is interviewed by a female reporter, he continually directs his answers to her husband, who has simply come along for the ride.

Blades, in fact, often credits his feminist grandmother with helping form his conscience. But this instinctive deference to males, while disappointing, is certainly not surprising for a salsa singer who has spent much of his life in the exclusive professional company of men.

The 12 members of Editus sit nearby as Blades talks, watching the machinations of stardom. Until meeting Blades two years ago, the musicians had toiled in relative anonymity in Costa Rica, recording albums of classical/new age music independently, selling them on the streets where they played for change. Blades got hold of one of the albums through a friend, and, impressed, went to Costa Rica to find them, and asked them to be his band.

Blades was interested in the young musicians, he says, because, at a time when he was looking to explore the European roots of Latin American music, they were classically trained musicians with a deep knowledge of folkloric music from Central and South America. Their next joint album, he says, will be a nonstop 70-minute “suite,” with movements linked through classical etudes.

Among other theories he’s developing, Blades is convinced that humans carry musical memories in their genes, and is further convinced that this is why he, of an Irish grandmother, loves bagpipes Blades looks out over the water as the craft picks up speed, holds his hat on his head with one hand, and explains his new direction in music: “For me as a musician, I got to the point where I became as good as my bands were. And I loved them dearly. But I was bored. I got very bored. Because it was all about me. It wasn’t about the music anymore. . . .

“When I found Editus, it was like, yes, this is what I’ve been looking for.”

The resulting collaboration, the album “Tiempos,” Blades’ first in three years, has been called the best Latin music album of the year by Rolling Stone, and defies convention in nearly every way. At a time when Latin music is said to be the new cash cow of the music industry, Blades’ intrepid approach stands out more than it ever has before.

“Not everything is about making money,” Blades says about the changing direction in Latin music in general and salsa in particular. “What is being produced today is being produced to sell, to make money, and to make celebrities out of people [whose] talents are not up to the task.

“I think it’s gotten worse. Because originally, I think, in New York in the ‘70s, there weren’t that many concerns about commercialization of the music, so you had, like, 25 bands, and they all played whatever they wanted and everybody had a style. It seems to me like now, because of the times and also because of the fabrication of the [pop] figures, the music is a lot less interesting.

“Today they know they can sell records, then all of a sudden the record companies will say, ‘OK, let’s create five more [artists] like this,’ and then they get the same arrangers, the same musicians, the same people, the same video. And they throw these things to the wall to see what sticks, and then if that sticks, that becomes the flavor of the week, and then that’s gone.”

Blades admits he has not always felt this way, and that he came to this realization by making mistakes. The biggest mistake of all, he says, was releasing an English-language album in 1988, just because everyone thought he should--a trap he says he sees younger singers such as Marc Anthony falling into now.

“Success to me, now, is nothing more than that you try to do what you think and feel is right. That to me is success, to a large degree. You know, for instance, this record [“Tiempos”] is a rough record as far as albums go. [Radio] programmers will look at this record and go, ‘What is this?’

“If you don’t want to play it on the radio, don’t play it. But I’m not going to now, all of a sudden, start worrying about making something just so they play it on the radio. I mean, what do I know about what people want to hear on the radio? So. . . .

“Let’s see who the hell remembers certain songs that are popular now 50 years from now. I can guarantee you that my songs are going to be remembered, because they were written honestly and with quality. They were not written for an audience of today based on what the people of today want. It was written for all people, at all times, anywhere in the world, and with a desire to make an honest, intelligent product.”

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* Ruben Blades plays Friday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 9 p.m. $30.