“Karaoke Castellano”
By Benjamin Ortiz, for Café Latino Lifestyle Magazine
April 2009
Twenty-seven-year-old Salvador likes to sing Soda Stereo songs, and it’s good practice for his Spanish pop-rock band Caoba. But tonight he might even croon to norteño accordion star Ramón Ayala’s music.
“It depends on how many I’ve had,” he says with beer-bottle punctuation, like he’s ready to pitch another one back and then cut loose with a tear-jerking ranchera cry that will send the whole house to Ayala’s “Un Rinconcito en el Cielo,” like a home on the range and a little piece of heaven left long ago, back in the homeland. (“A” is for Alejandra Guzmán. “B” is for Belanova. “C” is for Caifanes.)
Find out if you can sing your way through the Spanish-language alphabet on karaoke Thursdays, at the bar La Botana on Chicago’s Southwest Side near Midway Airport. Mix a few thousand song titles with a couple of shots of liquid courage, and see how long it takes you to get from Juan Gabriel to Selena, maybe with a detour past Molotov. (“Ch” is for Manu Chao.)
Host El Gran Iván flips tunes and butters up the crowd with Mexican radio-style vocab, like a high-strung frontera-airwaves announcer caught on a roller coaster of his own bilingual verbiage: “¡Qué no tengan miedo ni temor!”
Up next, two women grab the microphone and try to follow racing lines and stanzas from Café Tacuba’s “Ingrata,” but the duet comes to a crashing halt with a sluggish echo of indio-punk feedback. El Gran Iván declares, “¡Y que sigan pisteando!” [“Just keep on drinking!”]
Héctor Iván GarcÃa, 34, hosts Karaoke en Español as a part of Enchufate, the Latin alternative music promotions company he runs with thirty-something partners Sandra Treviño and José Calvo. “El Grán Iván” is the character he created when he was a 5-year-old mariachi singer, and that persona now serves to agitate, provoke and encourage the karaoke crowd with Spanglish double entendre.
“YouÂ’re at a place thatÂ’s energetic and live,” GarcÃa says of a typical Thursday night. “Your name is mentioned, and you make instant friends with your peers, with people that speak Spanish and like the same genres you like.”
“You see the metalhead singing a norteña and the dude in the cowboy hat singing El Tri,” he adds. “We come from all kinds of music and cultural influences covering the gamut of whatÂ’s Latino — and every week itÂ’s truly different.”
Born and raised a South Sider, GarcÃa also fronts Spanish rock band Descarga. “My whole upbringing has been a mix of Mexican and American, plus multicultural Chicago,” he says.
The Botana crowd, likewise, is a diverse gathering, with Mexicans from across the region and generation, Central Americans and homegrown Latino South Siders.
Bar co-owner Ivan Fandino was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and came to Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood when he was 3. He sees La Botana as a more upscale and Latino-friendly South Side spot for showcasing Latino arts and music.
Fandino has welcomed local and touring acts from a variety of genres, including Spanish rock and flamenco, and the venue currently offers salsa and merengue on Fridays. “We’ve had some tremendous singers come through here,” he says of karaoke night, mentioning that he occasionally sings one or two Freddy Fender songs.
El Gran Iván also jazzes up the event with DJ sets blended in between the singing. Local DJ Nando recently threw together a lively mix of Latin alternative and rock, with some funky shoe-gaze downtempo cumbia for good measure. Enchufate plans on scheduling more DJs, listening parties for new releases, ticket giveaways and free downloads to promote local Spanish-language and Latino music happenings.
GarcÃa started Karaoke en Español six years ago and moved it around town, landing at La Botana last fall. Enchufate partner Treviño notices a mostly Spanish-speaking audience at their current venue, but she also sees “the fresa [pop dandy] crowd that likes the pop and rock.”
To Treviño, Spanish karaoke is a way for people to connect with their roots, hear about new music and have fun. “People love their ’90s rock and they like their Luis Miguel, too,” she says.
Born in Chicago and raised in Durango, Mexico, José Calvo shoots photos for Enchufate and helps document the music scene. He admits to singing the occasional Ramón Ayala ditty, too — “Tragos Amargos,” to be specific. “That’s when the tequila kicks in,” he says. “People love going up there in front of everyone and letting it all out, whether they know how to sing or not.”
After all, how many of us ever thought that weÂ’d end up drinking and singing in a cantina, just like dear old dad or grandpa?
INFOBOX
Karaoke en Español
4818 S. Pulaski Rd., Chicago
Thursdays, 10 p.m.-2 a.m.
No cover
www.myspace.com/spanishkaraoke
www.enchufate.com
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