“Latin entertainment offers plenty of options nowadays: Spanish karaoke, indie-rock dance parties, drag shows”
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: On the Town front cover
Date: February 29, 2008
Beyond salsa and regional music, Latino Chicago offers much more than typical sounds and styles associated with the community. Younger Latinos from diverse backgrounds are combining disparate pieces of local culture into sometimes wildly eclectic hybrids and unusual entertainments. Off the map and charting its own path, alternative Latino Chi-Town remixes tradition to fit new beats and fashions.
There’s so much out there, if you dig a bit. Explore karaoke in Spanish, dancing to cumbia mixes and sassy drag shows. Here’s a taste of Spanglish Second City:
THE DANCE MOVES
At 4, Hector Ivan Garcia led his first mariachi band on vocals. His truck-driving Tex-Mex dad met mom, who is from Monterrey, in Chicago, bringing echoes of rancheras and norteñas along the way.
Though he now fronts Latin rockers Descarga, Garcia is a self-described karaoke freak. Over years of gigging around town and seeing venues come and go on the Latino rock scene, he knows music fans are fiending to take the mic themselves and get their fix for three minutes of celebrity, like a mariachi or a pop dandy or a good old boy, Mexicano-style.
Every Thursday, Garcia hosts Karaoke en Español at Spot 6 in Lakeview. His promotions company, Enchufate, provides more than 1,500 song selections across the spectrum of Latino sounds, from Selena to Celia, salsa to Soda Stereo.
“We don’t do English,” he warns. No matter. The event draws regulars from around town, including Lakeview’s off-the-clock Latino workforce, for a melange of rockers, rancheros, fresas (dandies) and retro New Wavers.
Spot 6 itself is a funky, artsy lounge, with a basement area featuring DJs during karaoke. From punk to bumpkin, Garcia says you’ll see Mohawks dueling with cowboy hats.
“I can recommend this show to lots of different people — my uncle, my friends, even college kids trying to learn Spanish.”
For anyone trying to learn Spanish, “Enchufate” means “hook yourself up,” as in “get connected with the scene.” On First Saturdays at Spot 6, Enchufate presents Indiecent, a Latin alternative electro-indie-rock dance party, featuring DJ sets in English and Spanish, meant to plug people in to a progressive Latino party atmosphere.
At the February party, a packed Spot 6 split between R&B/urban club-goers in the basement and alt-Latino hipsters in the lounge, with a multiracial mix. Hosted by DJ Nando, the show also featured Eduardo Calvillo, from WLUW’s popular Rock Sin Anestesia show.
Enchufate partner Sandra Treviño says the parties started in November as an offshoot of CD release events, because “there’s so much more music out there than what gets typical airplay.” Jumping from Ladytron to Kinky to Babasonicos to The Pinker Tones, February’s set had about 300 people grooving, with friends moshing arm-in-arm and salsa-inspired hips hugging bass lines to create new blends of Latin dance.
Fusion and innovative flavors likewise inform the drink and DJ selections at Ñ, an Argentine-style restaurant-lounge on Elston Avenue from the owner of Tango Sur. Well off the beaten path of Latino Chicagoloand, Ñ presents DJ David Chavez on Thursdays with Latintronica, a blend of tango, Afro-Cuban, house, cumbia and alt-Latin remixes.
Born in Logan Square to Salvadoran parents and raised on Chicago house music, Chavez started spinning at parties in the ’80s. After a trip to Cuba in the mid-’90s blew his mind with the discovery of son Cubano, Chavez became program director at HotHouse and got a chance to DJ for world-music audiences.
A recent set at Ñ switched from Puerto Rican bugalu to feverishly hot cumbia Colombiana to reggaeton, from classic Fania cuts to new Nacional Records tracks.
Chavez plans to include guest DJs and live musicians soon, to try out new approaches to Latin music. “This is a night for the discerning ear,” he says, “for the person who wants to hear fresh, new alternatives to commercial salsa and merengue.”
THE ROCK SHOW
On Friday nights near Midway Airport, rocker chicas with spiked hair in leg warmers and studded belts couples-dance to crazy merengue, bachata and cumbia mixes, because at Club Watra the dancing is just one menu item for a mainly Mexican crowd that comes to hear local bands play everything from ska to hip-hop to punk, in Spanish, at a once strictly Polish venue.
In Polish, “Watra” refers to a kind of campfire, though this club offers all the comforts: a sports-bar area, lounge and banquet-style concert hall. Promoter Leonardo Ibarra made inroads here a few years ago with his audio-visual company that rents out equipment. Working with promoters, bands and bars, Ibarra got the idea to put it all together. “Everybody goes to the North Side for entertainment and now we’re doing this for the South Side.”
Focused on local talent, Ibarra’s shows also hook up touring bands from Latin America. A recent Watra show featured hip-hoppers Masakre Skuad, punkers Herencia de Zapata and Spanish ska by Malafacha, on the main stage, while DJ Alex Perez had booties moving to more typical Latin fare, free of charge, in the lounge. The event brought out roughly 300 people across subcultures — Polish, American and Mexican.
Back on the beaten path, downtown’s Excalibur is known for more conventional tastes, but Second Thursdays bring the local Latin rock scene to the Dome Room. Promoter Andres Meneses organizes the shows through his company, Latin Street Dancing.
He says, “It’s very difficult to get people out to listen to Latino rock bands, at least local ones, and there’s not a lot of opportunities for them.”
His February show brought out nearly 100 people for bands 2012, Martires and headliner Damian Rivero — a funk-flavored, pop singer-songwriter — hosted by DJ Eduardo Calvillo. Meneses says the menu ranges “from Mexican metal bands to ska, rock and pop, everything but the tropical music.”
THE DRAG SHOW
Alternative Latino entertainment seems to sprout wherever it can survive, and El Gato Negro Bar is that kind of survivor. Despite changing neighborhood demographics in west Lakeview and over-the-top urban legendry — from word-of-mouth gossip to the Internet — Gato Negro has been around for more than 20 years as Chicago’s Latin transgender cantina.
Bar president Geraldine “Lua” Lambert came here from Sao Paolo, Brazil, to study at Loyola, and she has owned various properties around town. In 1986, she named this one The Black Cat in Spanish, because she’s an animal lover. “Black cats look like panthers,” she says. “They are very sexy and powerful.”
So follows the ambience, from a jukebox that spins apropos tunes (“A Walk on the Wild Side,” “Hey Big Spender,” “Private Dancer” etc.), to the Latin “girls” who try to outdo each other at lip-syncing and vamping, to the raucous house band that bops between burlesque and straight-up jazz.
Despite its rough-around-the-edges look, Gato Negro really gets going near midnight, when all the glitz and glam revert to the regular girls who sign up to show off.
Lua describes the clientele as two distinct groups: young men who dress up as women and older white guys on the down-low who come to see them.
“A lot of the girls have very sad stories,” Lua says, “because they’re not accepted in their countries and they’re discriminated against, but here they feel free and I never judge them.”
The bar also throws birthday parties for regulars, with cake and arroz con pollo.
Lua has a no-cover-charge policy, even though an eclectic multicultural band plays Thursdays through Sundays. Events usually start late, but once it gets going, the vibe is like Russ Meyers movies and Spanish telenovelas, with costumes and choreography, to the tune of wild sax trills, Mexican polkas, bossa nova and blues.
Just about every night is a show of sorts, with a sleek black cat as spirit guide and feline green eyes that beckon you to stop by for a drink.
– – –
WHERE TO GO
Indiecent Latin Alternative Dance Party
Spot 6, 3343 N. Clark St.
First Saturdays, doors open 9 p.m.
No cover
http://www.enchufate.com
Karaoke en Español
Spot 6
Thursdays, open sign-up list at 10 p.m.
No cover
http://www.enchufate.com
Latintronica DJ Show
Ñ, 2977 N. Elston Ave.
Thursdays at 10 p.m.
No cover
773-866-9898
Latin Drag Shows and Live Music
El Gato Negro Bar, 1461 W. Irving Park Rd.
Drag queen lip-sync performances on Sundays at midnight, live jazz on Thursdays at 10 p.m., Latin combo Friday-Sunday at 10 p.m.
No cover
773-472-9353
http://www.elgatonegrobar.com
Latin Rock Fridays
Watra Night Club, 4758 S. Pulaski Rd.
Doors open at 9 p.m.
Cover charge varies
773-927-0710
http://www.myspace.com/sonidoninja
Latin Rock Saturdays
La Española Tapas Bar, 6543 W. Cermak Rd., Berwyn
Doors open 10 p.m.
Cover charge varies
708-788-7400
http://www.myspace.com/sonidoninja
Live Latin Rock presented by Latin Street Dancing
The Dome Room @ Excalibur, 632 N. Dearborn St.
Second Thursdays at 10 p.m.
$10 advance, $15 at the door
312-427-2572
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