Panamanian singer/songwriter Rubén Blades transformed salsa into art music by mixing superbly danceable claves and choruses with realistic, literate lyrics. Brecht's Threepenny Opera inspired the richly detailed "Pedro Navaja" from Siembra, a 1978 Willie Colón collaboration that became salsa's best-selling album. Blades aspired to the salsa equivalent of a rock opera with Maestra Vida, a sprawling two-album tropical fantasia, but the style was just one of many the insatiable experimentalist nailed with his band Seis del Solar on their 1984 masterpiece, Buscando America.