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 When Steve and I decided to go to New York aka The Salsa Music County, one thing was certain, I was going to do a serious amount of music shopping!
I have been collecting salsa music almost as long as I have been dancing, thanks to the influence and guidance of my pops aka DJ Dennis (resident DJ of Salsa Central and The Cross in Moseley).
I have become a lot more serious about it over the last few years, so, whenever I go away, one of the first things I do is check out if there is anywhere to buy music!
Chris Soto (Hache Y Machete) recommended a store called El Barrio, right in the heart of Spanish Harlem. He was supposed to meet up with us and take us there but I was being far too impatient so Steve and I headed down to Spanish Harlem to find the store for ourselves. We literally stumbled across it by accident, we could hear that distinctive Latin beat in front of us so we headed for the doors of the store and my mouth literally fell open at the sight of all those cds! Talk about dying and going to salsa cd heaven!
 We were approached by a shortish Latino looking guy, he told us his name was Frankie and asked if we were on holiday. He was very friendly and tried to help us out by making some recommendations.
The unfortunate thing about El Barrio was that we could not listen to any cds if they were sealed, we understood but it was extremely frustrating at first, I very rarely buy music if I cannot listen to it so we were obviously a little concerned at this.
Chris had told us about a guy he knew who worked at the store called Lou. Lou is a bit of a tough looking guy, quite quiet, and when we originally came into the store, he didn’t really pay us much attention. However, once he knew that we knew Chris, he came out of his shell!
Lou knows a lot about music, he DJs in addition to managing El Barrio and he definitely knows his stuff. We decided to ask him to recommend some stuff, he was very good, first asking us what kind of music we were into, what artists we liked and he based his recommendations on those. We spent an hour or so in the store and then headed back to listen to our cds.
 Lou recommended some real gems, we were so impressed that we headed back to El Barrio a couple of days later, armed with some recommendations from the Salsa Central DJs reviews and a couple of tracks on a cd that we didn’t know the name of (I had embarrassingly tried to hum one of the songs when we were in the store first, when we played it to Lou, he said I was this close, holding his hands out really wide!).
Lou soon sorted us out, he found half of the CDs on the list and logged the names of the others so he could source them for us. So, yes, you guessed it, we ended up going back again a few days later!
 The store is frequented by a lot of the New York musicians, including Cheo Medina from New Swing Sextet, it really draws you in and makes you feel as if you are hanging out at a friend’s house! Not to mention the amount of music that you can get which is not available over here, and all at a really good price!
All in all, we visited El Barrio Music Center five times during our week in New York, every time we were made to feel extremely welcome by Lou and Frankie, which really made our trips to the store more enjoyable.
 So, if you are ever in New York, check out El Barrio Music Center, tell them Salsa Central sent you, you will not be disappointed!
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