CLOSE-UP ON SPANISH HARLEM
By Christine Lagorio, THE VILLAGE VOICE

Spanish Harlem, 1930: In the back room of Almacenez Hernandez, his sister's Madison Avenue Record shop, Raphael Hernandez eases a melody from the piano. Almacenez is the first Puerto Rican music store in a neighborhood soon to be nicknamed "El Barrio." Due to East Harlem's proximity to Manhattan's recording scene, the wedge between Central Park and the river is beginning to draw Hispanic musicians abandoning their former enclave of Red Hook, Brooklyn. Social clubs are springing up on neighboring blocks and Hispanic immigrants turn passion into a cultural force that overwhelms the old Jewish community and lingering Dutch influence in what had once been called Nieuw Haarlem.

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