Around the corner from the Little Mexico Grocery on Tito Puente Way in Spanish Harlem, the blast of brass horns and thump of conga drums rises from beneath the street. Take a peek under the metal doors in the sidewalk and down the steps and next to the washer, dryer and wall-mounted electricity gauges will be Teddy Fortunato and his eight-piece Cuban rhythm band jamming every Saturday night.
“We just relax and unwind,” says Fortunato, 37, an émigré from the Dominican Republic. Unlike his more hopeful counterparts in garages all over America, however, Fortunato and others like him who play in basements beneath apartments and bodegas around El Barrio are content to stay where they are. For better or worse, there is not a Taylor Hicks, Kelly Clarkson or even William Hung among them.
“Over there it’s all about love of the art,” Fortunato says of his home country. “Here, it’s all about the money.”
Several blocks away, the members of Tupo Tepango, a nine-piece Mexican band have been gathering for two years under a single, bare bulb in the dark cellar beneath a market on the corner of 109th Street and First Avenue. Hot water pipes and electrical wires dangle from the ceiling and broken bikes and cast-off scraps of lumber lie in forgotten piles, but the $200-a-month rent is manageable for the nine-member band, all young men in their late teens and early twenties.
Neither the clutter, the cold winter air blowing in from outside, even the time someone tossed eggs at them through the sidewalk doors above seem to bother the band. Jose Baeza, 21, the band’s slender-framed drummer with a wisp of a goatee, taps out a rhythm with his sticks and the band tears into a blazing-fast polka shot through with a hard, driving rhythm and chorus about amor and a woman named Rosita. The young musicians tap their feet and nod their heads in time with the music, looking off in the distance as if considering better places. Do they dream of “Cantando Por un Sueño,” Mexico’s version of American Idol?
“This is just a hobby,” Baeza says. “But maybe in the future we could live off the music,” he adds with a slight, hopeful grin.
Jaime Tapia, 30, operates a small production studio in Spanish Harlem and records bands that play traditional music like Cumbia and Norteño, as well as the newer, more fast-paced style called Durangense. Musicians have been using Spanish Harlem’s basements for more than a decade, he says, and at least a dozen currently perform live shows around the neighborhood. Some have had their instruments stolen, but Tapia generally thinks the arrangement is a good one, especially for noise-adverse neighbors.
“Everyone practices in the basements,” Tapia said through a translator. “It’s nice because people could be involved in gangs or drugs and music is healthier.”
In the summer, the metal doors leading from the basements to the sidewalk are flung open, and it’s possible to walk several blocks from a Cuban cantina to the Mexican countryside to a Colombian discoteca—at least musically speaking. And occasionally, some musicians make a leap from the basement to the big time.
Tapia recorded a group called Furado that he says became popular throughout New York and New Jersey two years ago. Everyone also knows Los Tigres Del Norte, the group that became famous in the 1980s and won a Grammy for its songs about criminals, love and running drugs across the border. Still, most Spanish Harlem musicians don’t seem starry-eyed by the prospect of cash piles, endorsement contracts and screaming throngs of fans.
“We can come here and relax,” says Mauro Cortez, 40, the bass player for a five-piece Mexican band called Mixteco Musical. “I work all week and come down and forget everything.”
Every Saturday, the members of Mixteco Musical practice in a basement under a three-story red brick apartment building on 103rd Street and Third Avenue. The room is no larger than a meat locker and the band’s two keyboards, drum set and massive black speakers fill most of the space. Over near the steps, someone has built an altar of saint’s candles and red plastic flowers. Several promotional posters of the band hang on the bare wall, each member clad in bright red dress shirts and white leather vests—the group earns extra money playing bars, parties and quinceañeras.
Cortez also works 12-hour days during the week as a flower arranger at a florist’s shop on Third Avenue, and his wife, he says, still lives in Mexico. Fingers flicking over the bass, Cortez closes his eyes, steps in front of the microphone and begins singing—perhaps a canción for her.
Seven blocks north and right around the corner from the Little Mexico Grocery on Tito Puente Way, Teddy Fortunato and several members of the band have gathered in their basement. It is an unseasonably warm February night and the doors leading from the basement to the sidewalk are open. Aboveground and across the street, a discount auto parts store sits dark and shuttered. People hurry home in the late evening, barely glancing into the basement.
Fortunato sits with his back against the building’s massive breaker box, and band members pass around a jug of sweet red wine and sip from plastic cups.
“It’s a good place to practice,” he says looking around at the small, gray-painted basement room. “It’s all we have.”
Only the percussion section is in attendance this evening. The band cranks up an instrumental, horn-filled Cuban version of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” on the stereo and keeps time with the timbales and conga drums. The music fills the small room, rises to the street above and, despite Fortunato’s philosophical outlook about fame, the band may have widened its fan base that night, at least by three. A young woman walking with two children smiled and performed a graceful two-step sashay as she passed an underground concert spilling light and music onto the sidewalk.
