One December night in 1948, a boy in the Bronx fell in love with a song. He was 14 and new to New York, and as he walked by a music store on Prospect Avenue, the strains of a Los Romanceros holiday tune, "Aires de Navidad," drew him inside. It reminded him of home, in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. So he took the 78 r.p.m. record for a test spin in a listening booth in the corner.
Miguel Angel Amadeo, 71, composer and owner of a Latin music mecca in the South Bronx. "This guy has just contributed too much," one admirer said.
Miguel Amadeo, left, with Charlie Gonzalez, an employee, in the back of Casa Amadeo in the South Bronx.
Fifty-seven years later, he has never really left. Miguel Angel Amadeo, who bought the record - his first, for 75 cents - returned in November 1969 and bought the store. Over the years, he transformed Casa Amadeo from record shop to cultural institution, establishing the tiny store at 786 Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx as the place to go for hard-to-find albums, for history lessons on Latin music and for simple conversation.
On a visit to Casa Amadeo, you might bump into Ray Barretto, a famous conga player; José E. Serrano, the Bronx Democratic congressman; or Antonio Montero, 48, an electrician with Local 3. You could buy a set of made-in-Colombia maracas emblazoned with the Puerto Rican flag or an $11.95 copy of an old Cheito Gonzalez compact disc, noteworthy because the title track, "Me Marcharé Llorando" ("I Will Leave Crying"), was written by Mr. Amadeo himself, one of dozens of his songs that have been recorded by Latin artists.
"The ones we pay attention to are the ones who rake in millions of dollars and who stay in our public conscience," Mr. Serrano said. "But neighborhoods have people who are really stars in their own right, and they never get the attention they deserve."
This week, the congressman and a number of Mr. Amadeo's admirers are coming together to pay him some overdue public attention. The Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, at Hostos Community College, is co-sponsoring a series of events honoring Mr. Amadeo and his music store. The celebration includes a bus tour of the neighborhood on Wednesday and a concert at Hostos on Friday night. Ray Santos, a Grammy winner, will lead an orchestra through some of Mr. Amadeo's biggest hits, with guest vocalists like Sophy, a popular Puerto Rican singer.
The name of the festivities - Que Me Lo Den en Vida (Give It to Me in Life) - comes from a salsa number written by Mr. Amadeo, who is known to many as Mike. The song was Mr. Amadeo's way of saying, essentially, that one cannot hear applause in a coffin. "This is like a cry, telling the people, you know, don't wait until I'm dead to go to a cemetery and say, 'Amadeo was a great guy,' " said Mr. Amadeo, 71. "If you're going to do that, do it now."
One man who took the song to heart was Wallace I. Edgecombe, the director of the Hostos arts center, who helped organize the celebration with Mario A. Torres Productions. Mr. Edgecombe said the idea was born not of bad news - Mr. Amadeo is in good health and has no plans to retire - but of a feeling that the time was right to salute a record store owner, composer, guitarist, Latin music scholar, husband, father and Bronx resident for a life lived sweetly, gently, like the romantic ballads for which he is known.
"It's time," Mr. Edgecombe said. "This guy has just contributed too much."
The proprietor of Casa Amadeo, distinguished-looking in bifocals and salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, has made the place live up to its name. It feels more like his home than his business. A large black-and-white photo of his father, Alberto Amadeo, a Puerto Rican composer known as Titi, adorns a wall leading to the back storage room, where a group of loyal customers often sit, sip rum from little plastic cups and listen to Mr. Amadeo strum a bolero, a soulful kind of ballad that is his specialty. Latin artists still call the store, asking him for boleros that they can record.
"He doesn't pat himself on the back," said Al Quinones, 49, a customer who runs a South Bronx community group called 52 People for Progress. "We do it for him."
Mr. Quinones and other regulars have become friends to Mr. Amadeo, and they look upon him as a father figure, calling him Pop. Sometimes they answer the phone or help other customers. One young man stopped by a few weeks ago on his way to a job interview so Mr. Amadeo could help him get his tie just right. Randy Rivera, a security officer at Rockefeller Center who has been coming to the store about 10 years, painted Mr. Amadeo's portrait and gave it to him, unsolicited.
"I've seen people who come in that door, and once they start coming in they don't stop," said Mr. Rivera, 37. "And it's not the CD's he sells. It's the man."