BackstageSeven o'clock on a summer evening, the lamppost at the corner throws its yellow halo onto the sidewalk, someone is frying platanos, and the church on the block has thrown its double doors wide open so the sound spills straight out onto the street. Up on the third floor, an abuela leans on her windowsill with a cup of coffee and a steady prayer. Down at the corner store, the bodega owner leans out to hear what all the music is about. And on the stoop, a couple of kids with a dented boombox stop what they are doing, because the whole calle, the whole street, has started to sing.
That block is where I am from. La Calle Canta, The Street Sings, is the album I made to prove that God never asked me to leave it.
What the title means
La Calle Canta means "The Street Sings." Not the cathedral. Not the arena. The street, the sidewalk, the stoop, the fire escape, the laundromat with the flickering fluorescent light and the buzzer at the end of the cycle. I built this record on salsa, on the cowbell and the mambo and the piano montuno, because salsa is the sound of the city barrio, the sound of the block party, the sound that gets people out of their apartments and onto the sidewalk. If the street was going to sing, it was going to sing in the rhythm the street already dances to.
There is a lie the church accidentally taught a lot of us who grew up in the barrio: that you have to make it out to get close to God, move up, move away, find a nicer neighborhood with a nicer building. This whole album is my rebuttal. God is not waiting for you in the suburb you cannot afford. He moved onto your block.
Why I had to make it
Because of one sentence in the Gospel of John: "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).
Dwelt among us. He did not visit. He did not commute in from somewhere nicer. He moved in. He took an apartment on the block. That is the truth behind the song "Cristo Es el Vecino Nuevo", Christ Is the New Neighbor. He is the one who moved in down the hall, and He knocks on the door, the peephole, the chain, the deadbolt click, and He is the neighbor you actually want to let in.
I made this album for everybody the fancy worship playlists forgot. The single mother in her kitchen apron packing a lunchbox at 7 AM. The father with the worn jacket who is out of work and ashamed of it. The teenager on the stoop who thinks nobody is coming to sit with him. I needed them to hear their own laundromat, their own bodega, their own kitchen, sung as holy ground, because it is.
The songs, and the streets in them
"Bendición en Cada Puerta", Blessing on Every Door, is built on a blood-red doormat that just says Blessings, and under it runs the echo of Exodus 12, the night the blood went on the doorposts and death passed over the house. Every door frame in the barrio can be a marked door. The plague passes over the ones He has covered.
"La Lavandería Está Llena de Gloria", The Laundromat Is Full of Glory, is maybe my favorite, because it is the least glamorous place I could think of. Fluorescent light, the hum of the dryer, quarters in the slot, a grandmother folding a school uniform. And I am telling you the glory of Yahuah fills that room as surely as it ever filled a temple. He is not too holy for the spin cycle. He is right there in it.
"Cantamos en la Bodega" takes it to the corner store, the bell on the door, the platanos hanging from the ceiling, the Cuban coffee steaming, the transistor radio behind the counter. I anchored it to the book of Acts, where the gospel got argued out in the marketplace, right where people actually buy and sell and live. Yeshua is Lord of the marketplace, cowbell and all.
"Los Jóvenes de la Esquina", The Kids on the Stoop, is the tender one. The concrete stoop with the chipped corner, the dice on the second step, the streetlight buzzing into dusk. And the whole point of the song is that Yeshua sits down with those kids. He does not lecture them from across the street. He comes and sits on the step, the same way He always sat down with the ones the respectable people would not touch.
Then "La Cocina de Abuela" slows the whole party down to a bolero-salsa ballad in a grandmother's kitchen, the yellow table with the floral plastic, the rice and beans steaming, a worn Bible open to Psalm 23 with the corner curled from use, her hands folded in prayer beside the salt. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." That grandmother has been the reason the whole block held together, and she never once left the kitchen to do it.
The block party is the point
By the time you get to "El Barrio Entero Baila", The Whole Barrio Dances, the church doors are open, three old men are leaning on the lamppost with their hats in their hands and tears on their cheeks, the dice game has stopped mid-throw, and the grandmother on the third floor is leaning out her window singing every single word. That is not a fantasy. That is a revival, and revivals in the barrio look like block parties.
Salvation did not ask me to leave my block. It moved onto it, sat on the stoop, filled the laundromat, and turned the whole street into a choir.
And it does not stay put. "Lleva la Bendición", Carry the Blessing, sends the whole thing to the next neighborhood, chairs stacked, instruments packed, the bus pulling up to take the joy one block over. Because a street that has learned to sing cannot keep it to one street.
Who this album is for
This one is for the barrio. For the single mother and the out-of-work father and the kid on the stoop. For the abuela in the third-floor window. For everybody who was ever made to feel that God lived in a nicer zip code than the one on their mail.
He does not. He moved onto your block. He is the new neighbor. He is in the laundromat and the bodega and the kitchen and He is sitting right down on your stoop next to you. So open the double doors. Let the sound spill onto the sidewalk. Lean out the window and sing.
The street is singing tonight. It's singing His name. Come out and join it. You already know the words.
